Deep-pocketed University of Pennsylvania donor Jon Huntsman Jr. threatened to close his checkbook unless his alma mater moves to “completely cut ties with its current leadership.”
“We are anchored to the past until the trustees step up and completely cut ties with current leadership. Full stop,” the former Utah governor told CNN in a statement on Thursday.
“Let’s make this great institution shine once again,” added Huntsman, who also served as ambassador to China and has been vocal about his objection to UPenn President Liz Magill’s response to antisemitism at the Ivy League school.
“At this point it’s not even debatable. Just a simple IQ test,” Huntsman told CNN of replacing Magill, who assumed the role last July.
Calls for an executive shakeup at the university have exploded following Magill’s congressional testimony about on-campus antisemitism, when she was repeatedly asked if calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate her university’s rules on bullying and harassment.
“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill said.
She has since issued a groveling apology for her remarks to Congress, an attempt to explain her failure by saying she was not “focused” on the issue.
But she also seemingly blamed university policies and even the US Constitution for allowing the calls to be made on campus.
The two minute-long video has since been slammed by New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as a “pathetic cleanup attempt” that “took over 24 hours to try to fix the moral depravity of the answers under oath yesterday” and did not even include a “sorry.”
UPenn’s own Board of Trustees has even called for Magill to resign in the face of growing outrage at her disastrous testimony on Tuesday, which has also seen Wall Street titan Ross Stevens of Stone Ridge Asset Management also looking to claw back his $100 million donation to the school.
Board Chairman Scott Bok is expected to talk to Magill about resigning on Friday, a source familiar with the proceedings told CNN.
The Post has sought comment from Huntsman and UPenn.
Ahead of the congressional hearing, Huntsman — the son of the late petrochemical billionaire Jon Huntsman Sr. — had already reportedly informed Magill that his charity, the Huntsman Foundation, will “close its checkbook” on future donations to the school, which in his words has become “almost unrecognizable” for its “silence” on Hamas’ attacks against Israel.
“Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option,” Huntsman wrote to Magill shortly after the terrorist group’s tragic Oct. 7 massacre.
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In his note, Huntsman also blasted the school’s “silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel,” which he termed “a new low.”
“Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate,” Huntsman wrote in his letter.
He said that “the only response should be outright condemnation.”
Though it’s unclear how much the Huntsman Foundation has gifted UPenn over the years, the figure is likely in the tens of millions.
Per UPenn’s campus newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Huntsman Sr. — a 1959 Wharton graduate — funded the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business with a $10 million gift.
He also cut a $40 million check in 1998, one of the largest gifts ever given to a business school at the time, the Pennsylvanian reported. And in 2014, he dished out “at least” $50 million more to Wharton.
Huntsman Sr.’s handsome donations made the school name a lecture hall after the late businessman, whose net worth was pegged around $1 billion by Forbes before his death in 2018.
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