Harvard University's $51 billion endowment organization attempted to assuage Silicon Valley leaders following the university’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by meeting with deep-pocketed investors.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, executives at Harvard Management Company, which oversees the nation’s largest college endowment, met with three Silicon Valley firms in Northern California: Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Andreessen Horowitz.
Along with meeting with companies in the tech-hub, they also met with Elad Gil, an Israeli-born investor, and Patrick Collison, the chief executive of payments company Stripe. Harvard is a direct investor in Stripe.
Both Gil and Collison have been outspoken against the Ivy League university after former President Claudine Gay's congressional testimony, which sparked fierce national criticism about the university's position on antisemitism on campus.
In a X post on Dec. 6, Collison wrote that he was "shocked" at the "shamefully evasive" responses from the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania during the congressional hearing on antisemitism on their campuses.
"I was shocked at the refusal to condemn calls for genocide during yesterday's Congressional testimony from the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn. I ended up watching a few hours of the hearing, and the answers were shamefully evasive and equivocal throughout," Collison said. "As an alum (albeit fleeting) of the first of those institutions, it appears that something is very broken."
In the meetings, the WSJ reported that Harvard representatives attempted to rebuild relationships and assure investors that the university is prioritizing student safety and free speech.
"HMC is fortunate to have strong, longstanding relationships with many investment managers who care deeply about higher education," Harvard endowment spokesman Patrick McKiernan told WSJ. "It is important to engage with our partners and share with them all of the ways that Harvard is actively working to ensure student safety and protect freedom of speech."
Gay’s resignation has eased the concerns of some managers, the WSJ said.
Private-equity executive Paul Finnegan, the endowment’s chair and a member of the 12-person Harvard Corporation that governs the university, said that the university was aware of the criticism that its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives had gone too far in recent years.
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HMC execs also said that with the increased prevalence of DEI on campus, they were aware that some students and professors felt they had to censor themselves.
The executives said that Harvard was looking into changing policies to accommodate greater academic freedom and freedom of speech, WSJ reported.
The pressure on Harvard's money managers came after Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel.
Investors, concerned about what they viewed as Harvard’s lackluster response to the attacks and to antisemitism under Gay, have led to donors removal of support for the university.
Billionaire Bill Ackman sent a lengthy letter to the former president of his alma mater, regarding antisemitism on campus, and shared it publicly on social media.
"I am writing this letter to you regretfully," Ackman posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Nov. 4.
The hedge fund manager called out Harvard's former president Gay for sending "a clear message that the eliminationist and antisemitic statements of the protesters are permissible on campus."
