Apollo CEO Marc Rowan’s plan to oust the leadership of his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, is picking up steam and will blow a $1 billion hole in the college’s fundraising efforts, the Post has learned.
Rowan’s attacks on the college stem from what he believes is an environment of antisemitism, including administrators’ failure to quickly condemn the recent deadly Hamas terrorist attacks.
Now so many potential and current donors are joining his effort that the $21 billion UPenn endowment might be deprived of as much as $1 billion in funding, these people say.
And Rowan won’t back down unless Liz Magill and Scott Bok, the UPenn president and the chair of the college’s Board of Trustees, respectively, are booted from their positions — a really real possibility given the surge in alumni support for his defund-antisemitism effort.
The main points of this groundswell of support for Rowan’s plan haven’t been reported, and it is alleged to be unprecedented within the clubby world of fundraising for university endowments.
For years, top alumni fundraisers like Rowan have chosen to voice their criticism of faculty policy to varsity administrators in private; high-profile alumni have traditionally stayed out of divisive cultural debates that occur on our nation’s campuses.
Apollo CEO Marc Rowan has demanded that the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership resign over their failure to quickly condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel.Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
That is perhaps changing given the rampant antisemitism on college campuses that exploded in recent weeks, and college administrators like Bok and Magill failing to promptly condemn each the terrorist attacks in addition to their students’ displays of support for the killing of innocents.
For Rowan and now hundreds of UPenn grads and benefactors, the tipping point occurred in September when UPenn’s leadership ignored their warnings that pro-Palestinian student groups were featuring antisemitic speakers during a “Palestine Writes Literature Festival.”
The festival took place through the Jewish high holy days and featured speakers who called for “death to Israel.”
Individuals who know Rowan say he was doubly horrified to learn UPenn student groups also supported the Hamas terrorists who on Oct. 7 killed and kidnapped innocent Israelis — beheading some infants at a kibbutz near the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Considered one of the worst atrocities in recent history occurred while school administrators remained initially silent.
That prompted an open letter demanding the resignations of Magill and Bok; Rowan accused the college’s leadership of fostering a climate of hate that condoned the violence and killing.
“I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who consider we’re heading within the flawed direction to shut their checkbooks until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok resign,” he wrote.
The open letter has grown to incorporate some 7,000 current and potential donors and graduates, a few of whom are on the college’s Board of Trustees, people near Rowan tell me.
They include UPenn grads Ron Lauder of the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire.
Former UN Ambassador Jon Huntsman, whose family are long-time donors to the university, joined the donor boycott as well.
Rowan has also accused Bok, who’s chairman of the investment bank Greenhill & Co., of going to Penn’s Board of Trustees in an effort to remove 4 board members who signed his letter.
Press officials from UPenn had no comment.
A choice to oust Bok and Magill might be as much as the 60-member UPenn board, and it’s unclear if there may be, a minimum of for now, the stomach to accomplish that.
A dangerous foe
That said, Rowan’s background in finance highlights why he’s such a dangerous opponent.
He’s a graduate of UPenn’s prestigious Wharton School of Business and his estimated net value is near $6 billion.
His Rolodex of wealthy people is amongst the very best on Wall Street, which implies that without him, UPenn might be deprived of a big funding source.
Don’t consider me? Consider: In 2018, he and his wife donated $50 million to the college.
A press release announcing the gift described Rowan as “chair of Wharton’s Board of Overseers, a Penn trustee, and co-chair of the college’s Greater than Ever fundraising campaign,” which is trying to raise $1 billion for the business school.
In 2019, the college boasted that the fundraising drive is “80% of the approach to its historic goal.”
People on Wall Street who know Rowan say his efforts have definitely shaken UPenn’s leadership, with Bok and Magill calling alumni and board members in an effort to maintain their jobs.
“Penn will lose lots of of hundreds of thousands of dollars unless those guys are fired,” one private equity official told me.
This column has addressed the lame response our virtue-signaling CEO class mounted, and why, to the massacre near Gaza. So kudos to Rowan for standing up.
Yet, as much as you ought to root for him and the others, you furthermore mght must ask what took them so long.
Long before CEOs of major American public corporations embraced wokeism on the office, the progressive left thoroughly infiltrated a few of our most prestigious universities.
Far-left faculty members have been indoctrinating students on lies that America is systemically racist and Israel is a partner in our alleged attempts to colonize the Arab world.
Free thinkers on campuses are routinely silenced and canceled.
The final result is what we’re seeing now: College kids brainwashed into rationalizing and even romanticizing the wanton murder of Jews by terrorists.
