Donor backlash devastates Ivy League as Harvard, Columbia seek bailouts



Ivy League universities, particularly Harvard and Columbia, have faced a crisis since October 2023, when both institutions revealed themselves as places where blatant anti-Semitism openly flourishes. Amid the anti-Semitic uprisings on campus, the presidents of both schools also faced academic plagiarism charges. Alumni and donors, who expected more from the schools’ leaders and did not share the apparent tolerance for Jew-hatred, have stopped contributing financially.

As reputational and financial damage mounted, Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in disgrace last January, and Columbia President Minouche Shafik followed in August.

Despite an endowment exceeding $50 billion, Harvard had to expedite bond offerings earlier this year to quickly raise $1.6 billion in cash.

But with those poison Ivies still trying to find a way to balance a hollow commitment to “tolerance” with appeasement of the widespread anti-Semitism demanded by much of their faculty and student body, donors remain repelled, and fundraising continues to struggle.

In early October, Harvard’s new president, Alan Garber, teased that some very bad financial news was about to be revealed for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2024. The Harvard Crimson reported Garber as stating, "Some of the new commitments have been disappointing compared to past years.” In discussing the passion of alumni who are concerned about the current culture and events at Harvard, Garber added, “They’ve been quite vocal.”

The bad news came out a week later. The Harvard Crimson reported:

Harvard’s fundraising crisis now has a price tag: $151 million. Total philanthropic contributions fell by 14 percent in fiscal year 2024 as several billionaire donors publicly severed ties with Harvard over its response to campus antisemitism. The $151 million decline marks one of the most significant year-over-year drops in donations in the past decade.

The donor crisis at Columbia has worsened. The university held its annual Giving Day event this fall, but donations dropped 29% from the previous Giving Day in 2022. (Due to campus turmoil over the university community’s support of Hamas' October 2023 terror attack, there was no Giving Day in 2023.)

The Columbia Spectator laid out the bad news:

Columbia held its 12th annual Giving Day on Tuesday, raising a total of $21,362,592 after a one-year hiatus, a 28.8 percent decline in funds compared to 2022’s record-breaking year.

As the University grapples with a donor crisis—born out of concerns regarding campus protests—this year saw a 27.9 percent drop in the number of gifts, falling from 19,229 in 2022 to 13,870, the lowest since 2015. This year is the first that the total monetary amount of donations has declined from the previous Giving Day since the event’s inception in 2012.

Viewed over a two-year span, the situation at Columbia is simply catastrophic. The university raised $58 million combined in 2021 and 2022. But over 2023 and 2024, the combined total plummeted to just $21 million. The $38 million decrease in biennial giving represents a 64% decline.

Amid declining contributions, it seems both schools are facing a liquidity squeeze.

Despite an endowment exceeding $50 billion, Harvard had to expedite bond offerings earlier this year to quickly raise $1.6 billion in cash. The university raised $750 million in taxable bonds through Goldman Sachs and received approval from Massachusetts to issue up to $2 billion in state tax-exempt bonds. However, investor demand only supported $735 million of those state bonds, leaving Harvard more than $100 million short of its $1.6 billion goal.

Having contributions fall off further in the meantime can’t be helping Harvard’s cash crunch.

Published reports indicate that Harvard’s endowment is only about 20% in liquid assets (cash, stocks, bonds) with about 40% invested in private equity, about 30% in hedge funds, and 10% in real estate and other illiquid assets.

Several months ago, billionaire Bill Ackman noted that Harvard’s budgeting and endowment management rely on certain assumptions about alumni donations. These assumptions didn’t account for the possibility of a donor revolt and the steep decline in current-year cash gifts. Ackman speculated that Harvard’s need for quick cash to make up for lost donations led to the recent bond offerings, especially given the current high-interest rate environment.

Journalist Ira Stoll revealed that much of the cash Harvard raised was used to pay off maturing debt issued at lower interest rates and to roll over some short-term debt.

I don’t know enough to question the legitimacy of Harvard’s illiquid investments, but it is reasonable to question the “investment strategy” of Harvard’s famous endowment if it is so illiquid that even with several years lead time to prepare for bond maturity, its other investment assets cannot get converted into cash to pay off maturing bonds, thus requiring new, higher-interest debt. If an investment cannot ultimately be converted to cash, how does it have a value?

Columbia University also announced a few weeks ago that it too was hitting the bond market for a cash infusion. Columbia is seeking to raise about $500 million with this new debt, despite having an endowment valued at around $15 billion.

The Ivy League schools, especially Harvard and Columbia, have exhausted their reputational capital, and now they are exhausting their working capital. They have shown themselves to be morally and ethically bankrupt. If their liquidity problems can’t be rectified, and if donors have permanently slashed their recurring cash lifelines, perhaps financial bankruptcy is also in the offing for Harvard and Columbia. It would be a long time coming.

Harvard Referred 68 Encampment Participants for Discipline. Now, With Classes in Full Swing, None Are Suspended.

Twelve days into the anti-Israel encampment at Harvard University, then-interim president Alan Garber said participants posed "a significant risk to the educational environment." After ending the encampment, his administration brought disciplinary cases against 68 students. Now, with fall classes in full swing, none of those students are suspended and most are in good standing, according to a House Committee on Education and the Workforce report.

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Robin DiAngelo Plagiarized Minority Scholars, Complaint Alleges

Robin DiAngelo, the best-selling author of White Fragility, is a big believer in citing minorities.

In an "accountability" statement on her website, which makes repeated reference to her Ph.D., DiAngelo, 67, tells "fellow white people" that they should "always cite and give credit to the work of BIPOC people who have informed your thinking."

It doesn't matter if their contribution is just a few words. "When you use a phrase or idea you got from a BIPOC person," DiAngelo says, referring to black, indigenous, and other people of color, "credit them."

But the white diversity trainer has not always taken her own advice. According to a complaint filed last week with the University of Washington, where DiAngelo received her Ph.D. in multicultural education, she plagiarized several scholars—including two minorities—in her doctoral thesis.

The post Robin DiAngelo Plagiarized Minority Scholars, Complaint Alleges appeared first on .

Harvard Taps Longtime DEI Advocate To Help Pick University’s Next President

Harvard University on Monday tapped an ex-McKinsey consultant who has criticized meritocracy and published controversial research on the benefits of diversity in business to help select the university’s next president.

The post Harvard Taps Longtime DEI Advocate To Help Pick University’s Next President appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Harvard student cries 'witch hunt' after another black female former professor accused of academic dishonesty



A student writer for the Harvard Crimson has called for a university-wide review of all faculty publications after investigative journalists uncovered more examples of alleged academic dishonesty at the hands of a black female former Harvard professor.

On Wednesday, Christopher Rufo of City Journal and Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire revealed that Lisa D. Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and a tenured professor at Michigan State University, has allegedly been even more untruthful about her academic work than previously thought.

Cook's economic credentials have been called into question at least since President Joe Biden nominated her to the Federal Reserve board in January 2022. Back then, critics noted not only that her list of publications was unusually thin for a tenured professor but that her most celebrated article — "Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940," published in 2014 — was predicated on egregiously flawed data, leading her to unfairly argue that lynching and discrimination caused the number of patents issued to black people to collapse around the turn of the 20th century.

One attempt at replicating her research for that article indicated that the number of patents issued to blacks at that time could have been nearly 70 times higher than the number Cook offered.

She also continues to mislead about the quality of at least one her publications. In 2022, Chris Brunet of the Daily Caller News Foundation noticed that Cook had claimed she had been published in the American Economic Review, described by Brunet as "the top peer-reviewed economics journal in the world." However, that 2009 article actually appeared in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, which is not peer-reviewed. Though this detail has been publicly documented for more than two years, the CV included on Cook's personal academic website — which is also linked to her directory listing at the MSU Department of Economics — still implies the article appeared in the more prestigious version of AER.

Now, Rufo and Rosiak have reported that Cook has also repeatedly copied lengthy passages from the work of other scholars without proper attribution and even committed "self-plagiarism," lifting excerpts from her previous articles and including them in new ones, thereby compromising the notion of original work. In the journalists' opinion, Cook's publication missteps demonstrate "a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct."

Cook, who was also once a member of the faculty of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and the deputy director of Africa research at its Center for International Development, is now the fifth current or former Harvard professor who also happens to be black and female to be accused of some form of academic malfeasance. The others include former Harvard President Claudine Gay, current chief diversity and inclusion officer Sherri Charleston, current Extension School administrator Shirley Greene, and current assistant sociology Professor Christina Cross.

"Let’s not ignore the pattern," Rufo tweeted a few weeks ago.

Maya Bodnick of the Harvard Crimson believes this "pattern" is actually the result of a conservative "witch hunt" to try and show that female black scholars plagiarize at disproportionally high rates. "But plagiarism has nothing to do with race, gender, or identity — rather, it’s a broad problem in academia," Brodnick argued.

To show that members of both genders and all racial groups commit plagiarism at roughly the same rates, Bodnick called for "a broad plagiarism review of the entire faculty" at Harvard. Though others suggested such a project would take years of work to complete and therefore cost a considerable amount of money, Bodnick insisted the review would be "worth the resources."

"We can’t let outsiders control the plagiarism narrative," she claimed. "Harvard and other universities must stay ahead of the game, surfacing instances of plagiarism and addressing them before malicious actors can hurt the University’s credibility."

Cook did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

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Columbia Law School To Host Speaker Who Charged Jews Benefit From 'White Privilege,' Creating Tension With 'People of Color'

Columbia Law School is slated to host an event next week with a DEI author and alumna who said Jews benefit from "white privilege," thus creating "some sort of tension" between Jews and "people of color."

The post Columbia Law School To Host Speaker Who Charged Jews Benefit From 'White Privilege,' Creating Tension With 'People of Color' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Democrat Mayor And Media Use Two Anonymous Tweets To Turn Bridge Crash Into Racism Story

The faux controversy over Baltimore’s mayor demonstrates that our establishment elites will always look for an opportunity to cry 'racism' to distract and redirect criticism.

Barack Obama Is Producing a Claudine Gay Drama Series for Netflix Starring Lupita Nyong'o

Barack Obama is producing a new drama series for Netflix about the life of Claudine Gay, the former Harvard University president who resigned in disgrace earlier this year amid accusations of plagiarism.

The post Barack Obama Is Producing a Claudine Gay Drama Series for Netflix Starring Lupita Nyong'o appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Leftist professor 'shaking with rage' because her race-obsessive peer at Harvard was outed as possible plagiarist



Yet another race obsessive on faculty at Harvard University has been exposed for alleged plagiarism. While scholars might take satisfaction that grifters are being outed, this latest revelation concerning assistant sociology professor Christina Cross has left one leftist professor "actually shaking with rage."

Quick background

Harvard University has been rocked in recent months by plagiarism scandals.

Claudine Gay resigned her post as Harvard's 30th president on Jan. 2 after nearly 50 complaints had been filed against her, implicating seven of her 17 published works, including her 1997 doctoral thesis. Despite disgracing the institution, Gay was able to remain on faculty.

Later that month, affirmative action expert Sherri Ann Charleston, the university's chief diversity and inclusion officer, was slapped with a complaint identifying 40 examples of alleged plagiarism in two of her academic works, including her 2009 dissertation.

A complaint submitted to the chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' professional conduct committee in February accused Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene of 42 instances of plagiarism — just in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation.

Critically plagiarized race studies

The latest Harvard plagiarism scandal concerns Christina Cross, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Cross — like Greene, a University of Michigan graduate — is apparently an up-and-comer in the field of critical race studies.

In addition to having an impactful article attributed to her in the New York Times, which downplayed the importance of the two-parent family, Cross has enjoyed support from the National Science Foundation.

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo reported Tuesday that a new complaint has been filed with Harvard's office of research integrity, this time against Cross, claiming her work suffers multiple instances of plagiarism, including "verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources."

Rufo indicated Cross did not respond to his request for comment.

According to Rufo, Cross is accused of lifting "an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby — the latter of whom was her dissertation advisor — without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations" in her 2019 dissertation.

The most serious allegation in the complaint is that Cross lifted an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby\u2014the latter of whom was her dissertation advisor\u2014without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations.
— (@)

In addition to apparently appropriating this entire paragraph without attribution, Cross allegedly plagiarized another full paragraph from Bosick and Fomby later in the paper, making only slight alterations. The complaint indicates that again, Cross failed to place the copied content in quotation marks or properly cite the actual authors.

Elsewhere in the dissertation and another paper, Cross allegedly lifts work from a number of sources, with minor word substitutions, without placing the copied language in quotation marks or properly citing the authors.
— (@)

Rufo stressed that "Cross cannot plead unfamiliarity with the source: Fomby served on Cross's dissertation committee, making the offense even more egregious."

Throughout the paper, the prospective CRT star ostensibly passed off others' ideas and language as her own. In one instance, she allegedly lifted a passage from a paper coauthored by another academic who served on her dissertation committee, again without using direct quotations.

When allegedly adopting real scholars' language as her own, it appears Cross, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, did not even bother to change their unique use of parenthetical notes or italics.

Rufo noted that Cross' apparent trouble expressing herself without adopting the language of others is not limited to her dissertation. The complaint suggests that Cross also plagiarized in a 2018 paper published in the journal Population Studies.

The Manhattan Institute fellow highlighted that Cross' alleged improprieties constitute plagiarism according to Harvard's own definition. The "Harvard Guide to Using Sources" states that "it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper."

According the university's latest student handbook, "Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College."

The fact that Gay, Greene, and Charleston have not been ousted bodes well for Cross, as it appears faculty and staff are not held to the same standard as students.

Literally shaking

Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College, was devastated to hear about her peer's possible bout of plagiarism — not that Cross had allegedly engaged in it but that she had been caught.

Gowayed, a race-obsessive critic of Israel who has advocated for abolishing border policing and the U.S. citizenship exam, tweeted Thursday, "So today I sat down to work, to write a talk. I then got a text from a friend that a colleague is being attacked purely & solely because she's Black by the same assholes who attacked Claudine Gay. And now it's an hour and a half later. These months have seen so much stolen time."

While evidently more concerned about stolen time than stolen ideas, Gowayed exhausted more time persevering on Cross' forthcoming fall from grace.

"I am actually shaking with rage," continued Gowayed. "I cannot stop obsessing over it. It's KKK level s**t. And I don't know what to do about it. I've never been more worried about what the near future has in store."

@victorerikray I am actually shaking with rage. I cannot stop obsessing over it. It's KKK level shit. And I don't know what to do about it. I've never been more worried about what the near future has in store.
— (@)

Gowayed was not the only academic left trembling by Cross' outing as a likely plagiarist.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote, "I'm just absolutely livid about this."

@kbguzzo @hebagowayed @victorerikray @donmoyn The name's Karen, huh?
— (@)

Guzzo added, "What a nightmare for her to have to go through."

Gowayed and Guzzo were both apparently fired up by Georgetown University professor Don Moynihan's Substack article alleging that exposés such as Rufo's "are examples of backlash, of a post George Floyd Politics" aimed at feeding "a culture of fear within research institutions."

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Coleman Hughes Silences CNN Host by Calling BS on Blaming Racism

Coleman Hughes Silences CNN Host by Calling BS on Blaming Racism