Posted on 12/07/23
| News Source: Arutz-7
Ross Stevens, a University of Pennsylvania donor. is withdrawing a gift worth around $100 million in protest against the school's response to antisemitism on campus, Axios reported on Thursday.
According to the report, the final straw for Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, was Tuesday's widely criticized congressional testimony by UPenn president Liz Magill.
Magill, along with several college presidents, danced around a question from Rep. Elise Stefanik on whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct.
The gift from Stevens, a Penn undergrad alum, was given in December 2017 to help establish a center for innovation in finance, according to Axios.
It was in the form of limited partnership units in Stone Ridge, with the current value estimated at around $100 million.
Stevens, in a letter from his lawyers to Penn, alleges that the school has violated the terms of the limited partnership agreement, including its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.
He wrote that the UPenn’s “permissive approach to hate speech calling for violence against Jews and laissez faire attitude toward harassment and discrimination against Jewish students would violate any policies of rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion, including those of Stone Ridge."
Magill on Wednesday sought to clarify her conduct during the congressional hearing, and claimed that “she was not focused” during the hearing on “the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil, plain and simple.”