The news that Harvard University is facing the largest collapse in annual total donations in a decade confirms suspicions that donors, dissatisfied with the university’s response to anti-Israel protests that exploded on campus after Hamas’s October 7 attack, would put their money where their mouth is. 

The financial report, released by the university on Thursday, shows that Harvard’s total donations fell by 14 percent — or by $151 million — from 2023 to 2024. The donation fallout was previewed last week by Harvard University’s president, Alan Garber, when he told the Crimson that the latest fundraising figures were “disappointing compared to past years.” 

Now, Harvard’s Jewish alumni are wondering: Will the university heed their boycott?

“You would hope it would be a wakeup call for the administration,” a spokeswoman for Harvard’s Jewish Alumni Alliance, Roni Brunn, tells the Sun. “But my sense is that Harvard has already hit the snooze button on this issue.” 

Ms. Brunn points to a comment made by President Garber during the same Crimson interview last week. While Mr. Garber acknowledged that the school’s fundraising numbers were “disappointing,” he claimed that “improvements” were likely to be seen in the future, citing his belief that donors and alumni are “reassured by the direction that the University is taking,” and that “they are relieved, at least that so far, this academic year has been somewhat quieter.” 

“That comment was the opposite of reassuring for our constituents,” Ms. Brunn tells the Sun, adding that antisemitism has continued to plague Harvard’s Jewish students well into the fall semester. 

The latest incident occurred just last week, when stickers depicting an Israeli flag with the star of David replaced by a swastika were pasted on campus buildings near the Harvard University Hillel. “Should people be thinking that we’re moving in the right direction?” Ms. Brunn asks. 

Harvard’s troubles began just a few hours after the October 7 attack when some 30 student groups issued a letter calling Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre. Then-president, Claudine Gay, took two days to issue a statement that neither condemned Hamas nor addressed the student letter. A day later she denounced Hamas’s attack as “terrorist atrocities.” 

Ms. Gay became further mired when she, along with several other university presidents, was called to testify before Congress about antisemitism on campus. The former Harvard head failed to answer “yes” when asked by a member of congress if calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules. Criticism over Ms. Gay’s disastrous testimony and her mishandling of antisemitism at Harvard — in addition to accusations of plagiarism — led her to resign in January. 

A week later, six Harvard students filed a lawsuit against the school over its failure to protect them from the “severe and pervasive” antisemitic discrimination that has caused the school to become “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” Harvard tried to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the administration had taken “tangible steps” to address antisemitism and that the Jewish students’ “dissatisfaction with the strategy and speed” of the school’s efforts “does not state a legally cognizable claim.” The motion was denied by a district judge who ruled that Harvard had “failed its Jewish students.”

The controversies over the past year drove several high-brow donors to publicly declare that they were pulling the plug on their generous gifts to the university. Back in January, billionaire hedge fund manager, Ken Griffin, who has donated a record-breaking $500 million to the school, announced that he was pausing his donations to his alma mater over its antisemitism problem. Before him, Len Blavatnik, who made history when he donated the largest single gift to Harvard Medical School in 2018 — a cool $200 million — also said he was pumping the breaks on his charitable donations. 

President Garber alluded to Harvard’s challenging year in his report commentary, opening with the note that “This year’s financial report for Harvard University offers much to unpack.” However, Mr. Garber also promised that the Ivy League school would “emerge stronger from this time—not in spite of being tested, but because of it.” 

Harvard is hardly out of the woods yet. The university is currently facing at least three federal civil lawsuits, a civil rights probe by the Department of Education, and an investigation by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which announced last week its finding that Harvard had failed to discipline a single student accused last year of committing antisemitic acts on campus.

Correction: Novi Zhukovsky wrote this story, an earlier edition misstated the author’s name.