Ousted University of Pennsylvania President Scott Bok argues that donors should have no say in school functions after several wealthy businessmen withdrew their donations to the university over its handling of anti-Semitic incidents on campus.
“I think donors are absolutely free to donate to any organization they want or not, and to withhold for any reason they choose,” he told Bloomberg TV.
“But they’re not shareholders, so I don’t think they should have a particularly loud say in how universities are run.”
Bok, chief executive of investment bank Greenhill & Co., had previously expressed similar sentiments in an op-ed he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Donors should not be able to decide university policies or determine what is taught…” he wrote, saying that “universities must be very careful about the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a bigger brand. than the university itself.”
He stated in the article that for almost all of his 19 years on the board, there was a “very broad, largely tacit, consensus about the roles of the university’s various interest groups: the board, donors, alumni , teachers and administration.
Ousted University of Pennsylvania President Scott Bok argues that donors should have no say in university functions. REUTERS
“Once I concluded that this long-standing consensus had evaporated, I decided that I should step down from the board and let the others find a new path forward,” wrote Bok, who announced his resignation as president of the University’s board of trustees. of Pennsylvania. trustees earlier this month.
The decision came after several big-name donors withdrew their contributions of hundreds of millions of dollars to the elite university in an effort led by fellow Wall Street mogul and Apollo Management CEO Marc Rowan, a Wharton graduate who Together with his wife, he donated $50 million to the business school in 2018.
Rowan demanded in a letter to the board in October that Bok and now-former chairwoman Liz Magill resign in disgrace, and called on other business leaders to do the same.
Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, began an effort to get donors to withdraw their funds from the school. AFP via Getty Images
The efforts grew after Magill failed to definitively say that calls for genocide of Jews on campus violated the university’s Code of Conduct, and even former Utah Gov. John Huntsman said the school needed to cut ties with its leaders.
Speaking to Bloomberg TV on Thursday, Bok said the board was struggling to determine its best option as “we haven’t had any kind of crisis or controversy in a long time.”
He warned that trustees – who normally only focus on the financial health of an institution – “should not overreact” in such a situation.
“It’s a small fraction of 1% of people at these elite schools who are actively participating in a way that anyone would find concerning,” he said of those who participated in anti-Semitism.
“We should not fundamentally destroy a governance model that has worked for a very long time and has made our universities the envy of the world because of a very short-term crisis.”
More and more donors withdrew their funds after former President Liz Magill failed to say definitively that calls for the genocide of Jews violate the university’s Code of Conduct. Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
Others at the Ivy League school have also claimed that the donors overstepped their bounds, especially after Rowan sent an email to administrators asking them to examine the “qualification criteria for faculty membership,” according to the Inquirer.
Rowan stated in the letter that Penn has a “culture” problem that the board needs to address.
“While anti-Semitism has received the most attention, I believe this is just a symptom of a larger problem… a culture that has allowed anti-Semitism to take hold and be accepted within UPenn, that has allowed free speech preferred and that has distracted attention from UPenn’s core. mission of scholarship, research and academic excellence,” he wrote, according to the Inquirer.
He went on to say that Magill’s failure represented that of the entire board, because he did not address issues that he said were key “based on the roles and responsibilities of the trustees as dictated by UPenn’s bylaws” and “the result of numerous conversations with trustees, faculty academic leaders and other institutions and elsewhere.”
Rowan stated in an October letter that Penn has a “culture” problem that the board needs to address. Police release Penn
Reading the letter, the UPenn chapter of the American Association of University Professors issued a statement saying: “Today, unelected and academically inexperienced administrators are evidently attempting a hostile takeover of the central academic functions of the University of Pennsylvania : functions related to the curriculum. , research and recruitment and evaluation of teachers.
“The issues being considered by the trustees represent an assault on the principle of academic freedom, which was first articulated a century ago to safeguard the educational mission of universities,” the statement said.
But even Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro criticized the board for failing to “take concrete action” amid anti-Semitism on campus.
He said he first met Magill and Bok after a controversial “Palestine Writes” literary festival was held at the school in September.
Shapiro would then hold more meetings with university officials after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, wanting to know what the university was doing to hold professors accountable if they made students feel unsafe, he told Wall Street. Journal.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said the school needs an immediate “change in policy and approach.” Stop the anti-Semites / X
Bok said he remembered that conversation, “but anything that involves limiting what tenured professors can say on campus will obviously require a lot of consultation with faculty and will not be something a president can do unilaterally.”
Shapiro said he also spoke with Magill and Bok about creating a stronger response to people who tear down Israeli flags or place anti-Semitic stickers on private property.
“Penn has a lot of work to do now, as they select a new chairman and president,” the Democratic governor said. “But we can’t wait for all that to happen. “We need a change in policy and approach happening now at Penn.”
When asked how the university should try to find a balance between free speech and calls for genocide, Shapiro simply said, “That’s their challenge.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn