Jon Huntsman says family ‘will close its checkbook’ to Penn over nonresponse to Hamas’ attack on Israel

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman will stop making donations to the University of Pennsylvania over its lack of a response to Hamas’ attack on Israel, he said in an email sent Saturday.

News of the email was first reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at Penn, which is a member of the Ivy League.

Huntsman, who also served as a U.S. ambassador to Russia and China, sent the email to Penn President Liz Magill. He wrote the university had become “deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable.”

“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low,” he wrote.

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“Consequently, Huntsman Foundation will close its checkbook on all future giving to Penn — something that has been a source of enormous pride for now three generations of graduates. My siblings join me in this rebuke,” he wrote.

Magill released a statement Sunday, stating she and the university “are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians.”

Multiple donors have withdrawn their support from the university over its lack of response to reported incidents of antisemitism on campus, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The donors may also have been responding to a call from Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management and chair of the Board of Overseers at the Wharton School, the university’s business school, who said donors should “close their checkbooks” until Magill and other university officials resign. Rowan made the comments on CNBC and in The Free Press.

Huntsman graduated from Penn in 1987, as did his father, the late Jon M. Huntsman Sr. The family has made sizable donations to the school, including a $40 million donation to the Wharton School in 1998.

Huntsman’s decision received support and accolades on social media from academics and prominent writers.

Former Yale professor Nicholas Christakis wrote on X, “It’s not so much about condemning Hamas. It’s about the rank hypocrisy of these elite institutions, which have alienated themselves from their actual mission, losing all credibility in the process.”

“Well done,” wrote Seth Mandel, executive editor of Washington Examiner Magazine.