Universities Tolerating Anti-Semitism Try To Raise Funds As Federal Grants Dry Up

Elite universities around the country are scrambling to find other sources of funding as President Trump withholds or delays federal dollars in light of their tolerance of antisemitic harassment and attacks on Jewish students, it was reported Wednesday.

The Trump administration has taken away or put on hold a total of some $10 billion in federal funding of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others, according to published reports.

The action comes after pro-Palestinian activists, largely unheeded, threatened Jewish students and blocked them from attending classes last school-year.

Rather than significantly deal with the issue, university officials have sought alternate routes of revenue, including selling off private-equity holdings ( often at lower than expected rates) and issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds.

The universities “are not panicking but want to be prepared for the worst, “ Greg Dowling, an official with the investment firm, Fund Evaluation Group, told the Wall Street Journal.

Harvard, facing a threat by Trump to pull its tax-exempt status, filed suit on Monday against the Trump administration, claiming Trump is challenging the university’s “academic independence.”

Officials of the Ivy League school said nothing of the academic independence that their Jewish students thought they had.

—David J. Glenn