Contributions to Harvard University’s endowment dropped by $151 million – 14% – in fiscal year 2024 following ongoing anti-Israel protests that have turned off several billionaire donors.
The Harvard Crimson reported that total contributions to the endowment fund actually dropped by $193 million – the greatest year-over-year drop in the past decade, but a $42 million increase in current-use gifts propped up the final net total decrease.
The massive loss to fundraising comes after several billionaires said they would stop donating to the Ivy League university because of how it handled anti-Semitism on campus. Hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin, who graduated from Harvard in 1989, announced in January that he would pause donations. A year earlier, he donated $300 million to the school’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Griffin blamed the school’s handling of anti-Semitism for his pause on donations.
“I’d like that to change and I have made that clear to members of the corporate board,” he said at a conference, according to the Crimson. “But until Harvard makes it very clear that they’re going to resume their role as educating young American men and women to be leaders, to be problem solvers, to take on difficult issues, I’m not interested in supporting the institution.”
He also called Harvard students “whiny snowflakes” obsessed with “microaggressions” and “DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion].”
“Will America’s elite university get back to their roots of educating American children – young adults – to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions, a DEI agenda that seems to have no real endgame, and just being loss in the wilderness?” he asked.
The Crimson also reported that university leaders were privately worried about longtime donors pulling back after the university’s response to anti-Israel protests on campus.
Even with the backlash, the university hasn’t appeared to take any steps to stop the anti-Semitism. Just this week, The Daily Wire reported that Harvard allowed students 10 minutes to protest an anti-Hamas speaker invited to the campus. The Harvard student hosting the speaker was also forced to read a statement informing the audience about the protest.
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Harvard is not the only Ivy League facing funding issues. Columbia University’s annual “Giving Day” donations dropped nearly 30% after the school allowed anti-Israel protests to linger on campus, The Daily Wire reported previously.
For the first time, the university suffered a massive drop in donations, after pausing the event in 2023 after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Columbia Spectator reported. Since resuming the event, the school has had a nearly 30% drop in donations.
In 2022, Columbia raised $30 million on Giving Day, compared to $21.4 million raised in 2024 – a 28.8% drop. This was the lowest amount raised since 2018.
The number of donations also declined 27.9% this year after rising steadily for the first 10 years of the event, the Columbia Spectator reported.
