Harvard agitators turn their ire toward Penny Pritzker

The leadership turmoil engulfing Harvard University is putting a major Democratic Party figure on the defensive.

Penny Pritzker, a former Obama Cabinet official, current Biden appointee and longtime Democratic megadonor, on Wednesday rejected calls to step down from her role at the top of Harvard’s most powerful governing board.

It comes a day after the resignation of university president Claudine Gay. She stepped down amid growing controversies over her handling of campus antisemitism in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and allegations of academic plagiarism — and as some civil rights activists accused the concerted far-right campaign to oust Harvard’s first Black leader as being motivated by racism.

Pritzker, who led the presidential search that selected Gay last year, is now facing her own scrutiny about her future at the helm of the Harvard Corporation and as Republicans cheer on the chaos shrouding the university.

“Senior fellow Penny Pritzker is not resigning,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO on Wednesday.

The announcement comes after Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager and outspoken critic of Harvard’s handling of claims of antisemitism, called on Pritzker, the former U.S. Commerce secretary, to resign over the handling of Gay’s hiring and ultimate exit from the Ivy League school.

“The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done,” Ackman wrote in a lengthy screed on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Call it the battle of the billionaires. Ackman and Pritzker both sit on the Forbes billionaire list and are noted political donors to Democratic candidates. They are also both Jewish Americans and Harvard alums.

Others on the right also called for Pritzker’s ouster this week, including former Trump administration official Ric Grenell and Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who helped orchestrate the successful campaign to take down Gay’s leadership of Harvard.

Pritzker was recently tapped by President Joe Biden to serve as special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery. She’s also the sister of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who announced soon after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that Illinois “unequivocally” stands with Israel.

The Pritzkers have long supported Jewish causes. JB Pritzker was the force behind building the Illinois Holocaust and Education Center, donating millions to the center. Penny Pritzker has spoken at events supporting the U.S. Holocaust Museum. She had worked on President Barack Obama’s campaign before being named to head Commerce.

Those close to Pritzker defended her handling of what is undoubtedly a thorny campus crisis. Bruce Andrews, former deputy secretary of Commerce under Pritzker, said he had spoken with Pritzker about her views on Gay. He added that she told him Gay was “a really high quality candidate” for president and a “good leader.”

Regarding issues around Israel and Palestine, Andrews recalled Pritzker’s trip to Babyn Yar in Ukraine, where Jews were massacred in 1941, while at the Commerce Department and her family’s personal history with antisemitism. He has spoken to her at least twice since the issue has taken hold at Harvard.

“She was trying to figure out how to do the right thing and how to make sure that [Harvard] balanced what are a whole bunch of really complicated dynamics,” Andrews said. “You’ve got students with multiple sets of views. You got faculty … you’ve got alumni with multiple sets of views. You have donors with multiple sets of views. You now have the dynamic of Congress weighing in and sort of trying to be part of university oversight.”

“This is a Rubik's cube of multiple stakeholders,” he added.

At Harvard, Pritzker is the first woman to lead the Harvard Corporation, which led the presidential search that ultimately selected Gay. Pritzker has been on the board since 2018 and became senior fellow in 2022. She had previously served on another governing board at Harvard, the Board of Overseers.

Amid the crisis, the school has benefited at least somewhat from her connections. Pritzker had brought in PR giant Edelman to help Harvard. CEO Richard Edelman was in Massachusetts to assist in the school’s strategy.

Pritzker has also found herself in the crosshairs of congressional lawmakers. In December, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, sent Pritzker a letter asking for documents related to plagiarism allegations against Gay. The letter cites that Harvard’s federal funding “is conditioned upon the school’s adherence to the standards of a recognized accreditor,” which in Harvard’s case requires efforts against plagiarism.

Pritzker has sat on Harvard’s Corporation since 2018 and in 2022 became senior fellow, a role similar to board chair at other universities. She previously served on another governing board at Harvard, the Board of Overseers.

“Higher education is under attack, and I like a challenge,” Prizker said of her Harvard role in a January 2023 Bloomberg interview with David Rubenstein, a fellow billionaire, Democratic donor and a colleague on the Harvard board at the time.

“She’s done an excellent job under very challenging circumstances,” said Alan Solow, a longtime friend who served as co-chair of the Obama reelection campaign with Pritzker. “And I’m not in a position to second-guess any of the decisions that either she or the board has made because nobody on the outside has the full view of the facts that she or the board does.”

“When you’re leading an organization, you do the best you can to get the decisions right,” he added. “There’s no guarantee of 100 percent perfection, and nobody should be held to that. She’s in a very difficult situation, and if I had to choose somebody to try to manage through and provide leadership in a difficult situation, Penny would be at the top of my list.”

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.