UPenn donor who cut ties with alma mater redirects millions to Israeli universities instead: 'Unreformable'

After halting donations to his alma mater last year, a former University of Pennsylvania donor has redirected $5 million to Israeli universities instead, citing the Ivy League institution's refusal to address antisemitism on campus.

David Magerman, a venture capitalist and philanthropist, has reallocated millions in donations to universities in Israel after witnessing the anti-Israel protests and antisemitism that has permeated U.S. college campuses in the months following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, he told Fox News Digital.

Magerman said he will give $1 million grants to five institutions of higher learning across Israel, including Tel Aviv University, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Bar-Ilan University and Jerusalem College of Technology. 

He also revealed that he intends to donate to additional Israeli causes in the coming months. His donations will support programs for English-speaking students to learn academic Hebrew and integrate into STEM degree programs in Israel.

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Several major University of Pennsylvania donors have cut ties with the school over its response to the Hamas attack on Israel and to pro-Palestinian student groups. (Getty Images)

Magerman said he hopes his contributions will give Jewish-American students who are considering moving to Israel more options to study abroad after growing weary of campus life in the U.S.

"My plan is to redirect my philanthropic efforts going forward largely to Israel," he told Fox News Digital. "I don't see much value generated by giving to American universities. I think that liberal colleges in America are flawed institutions that are doing a poor job of preparing students for the real world."

Asked what his message is to other prominent Jewish donors still contributing to Ivy League schools, Magerman said pointedly, "Stop." He said it's naive to believe that elite U.S. universities are "reformable."

"They're fulfilling the mission they want to fulfill. Their goal, it seems, is to indoctrinate their students to question the validity of Western civilization, to question the value of the Founding Fathers and to criticize Western society. I don't think that's what these philanthropists believe and I don't think that they should be donating money to support propagating that ideology," said Magerman.

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Social media influencer and activist Lizzy Savetsky, center, speaks with Jewish UPenn students about their concerns surrounding antisemitism on campus. (Lizzy Savetsky)

Still, Magerman said Jewish students that are either currently enrolled at an Ivy League university or have dreamed of applying should not let bad actors prevent them from pursuing a degree.

"If their best outcome is by going to Columbia, or Penn, or Harvard, they shouldn't let antisemites stop them," he said.

But, he added, "I think they should re-evaluate whether that's the best place for them to learn… whether I would be well served going to an institution where clearly the administration, in large part the faculty and in large part the student body, don't want me there. Is that really the environment you want to go to learn subject matter that you can learn online or abroad or at different colleges across the U.S.?"

"Why subject yourself to this environment just so you can get that name on your diploma?" he continued.

Magerman said employers and company executives largely agree with the sentiment, adding that they now place less of an emphasis on hiring Ivy League graduates than in the past.

"I think their eyes have been opened to the mentality of some of the graduates of these schools and what they've been learning," he said.

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University of Pennsylvania campus. (Jumping Rocks/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

A UPenn student told FOX 29 in December that his fellow fraternity members "don’t even feel comfortable walking outside our house wearing their kippahs just because they don’t know if they’re going to be harassed." A separate student said her friends have collectively decided not to apply to the elite university over fears of facing hostility over their Jewish identity.

Days after the Oct. 7 massacre, Magerman sent a letter to UPenn announcing that he was cutting ties with his alma mater for not taking a bolder stance against antisemitism in the wake of the terrorist attacks carried out against Israel. After donating roughly $10 million over the years, Magerman said he was "ashamed" to be associated with the university. 

"You have shown me who you are. My only remaining hope is that all self-respecting Jews, and all moral citizens of the world, dissociate themselves from Penn," the letter, dated Oct. 15, said. 

As anti-Israel protests and encampments emerged at major universities across the country, other prominent donors followed suit.

Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, who donated $50 million to UPenn in 2018, called on other donors at the time to send $1 checks with the hopes of forcing a change in leadership at the university. He urged all Jewish donors to "close their checkbooks."

Ross Stevens, founder and CEO of Stone Ridge Asset Management, pulled his donation estimated at approximately $100 million shortly thereafter, writing in a letter that the school's "permissive approach to hate speech calling for violence against Jews and laissez-faire attitude toward harassment and discrimination against Jewish students would violate any policies or rules that prohibit harassment and discrimination based on religion," Axios reported.

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During a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, 2023, Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, is asked about her response to protests that erupted after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.  (Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The outrage began after the school hosted a Palestinian literary festival on campus which included speakers with a history of antisemitic comments, including calls for "death to Israel." Many donors reached their boiling point when the university failed to, in their view, immediately condemn Hamas' barbaric attack and later failed to take sufficient action to protect Jewish students and address anti-Israel protests on campus, which many say blurred the lines between free speech and outright antisemitism. 

The outrage and halt in donations eventually led to the resignation of UPenn President Liz Magill. Magill also took heat for her widely panned testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee last year in which she refused to outright say that antisemitic chants and calls for the genocide of Jewish people violate the school's code of conduct.

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In a press release from Tel Aviv University released this week, Magerman said he hopes that redirecting donations to Israeli institutions "will be a catalyst for others to do the same."

The University of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment.

Fox News' Chris Pandolfo and Adam Sabes contributed to this report.