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Donations to Columbia University continue to plunge in response to the pro-Hamas anti-Semitic protests on campus

Columbia University's seal
The motto means “In Your Light [God],
We Shall See the Light.” Too bad no one
running Columbia now believes in this.

During an annual fundraiser event this week at Columbia University, donations plunged nearly 29 percent from its last event in 2022.

Columbia’s “Giving Day” event in 2024 raised $21.4 million, a significant decrease from the $30 million it garnered in 2022, according to the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper. The event was not held in 2023 due to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent protests on campus.

The university also saw a nearly 28 percent decline in the number of gifts, which dropped from 19,229 in 2022 to 13,870 in 2024, the lowest level since 2015 and the first time the total monetary amount of the donations declined from the previous year since the event began in 2012. In response to the decline, the Columbia Spectator stated that the university is currently facing a “donor crisis — born out of concerns regarding campus protests.”


This story merely reinforces the decline in support for Columbia. In July it was reported that several major big donors had pulled money from the university, citing its willingness to tolerate violence and discrimination against Jews as well as its unwillingness to prosecute pro-Hamas students who trespassed and rioted on campus in the spring. Its board of trustees at that time took action to prevent the university president from taking any firm action to stop the occupancy of the campus by these students.

It remains entirely unclear whether this decline in donations will have any impact. While there does seem to be some effort at the university to clean up its act, the effort has so far appeared half-hearted and mostly centered on producing good pr while changing nothing. It took action this week to make sure the competing demonstrations by pro-Hamas and pro-Israel students marking the one-year anniversary of the Hamas massacre in Gaza would remain peaceful, but it also appears it continues to condone having a large block of students attending the university who not only see nothing wrong with the rape, torture, and murder of innocent Jews by Hamas, continue to advocate more such massacres.

During the last school year, Columbia became a focal point for both campus turmoil and the testing of free speech limits. In the last month, anti-Israel protesters vandalized the Alma Mater statue, an important campus landmark, and staged an unauthorized sit-in inside the lobby of the School of International and Public Affairs.

In other words, the university continues to tolerate such behavior, allowing the students involved to remain uncharged and enrolled, despite their actions clearly disqualifying them from earning a college degree. No wonder donations continue to drop.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Richard M

    Don’t worry, I’m sure CAIR will pick up the slack.

  • Its all related:

    IN THE REAL-WORLD KAMALA CAN NEVER BE PRESIDENT

    “This is the shortest and the most accurate SIGM3iOC observation and comment you will ever read and the same for the video that illustrates my point:”

    https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/in-the-real-world-kamala-can-never-be-president

  • Bosco Bob

    As of June 30th 2023 they had $13.64 billion in their endowment fund.
    I don’t think they are worried.

  • GaryMike

    I’m quite glad I attended University in the 70’s. No student loan debt. Worked for my tuition.

    I don’t know how to get into the headspace of anti-Semites. I probably don’t know enough about history. I must be really stupid.

    Before she passed, my most significant-other for more than 30 years was a Jew. I’m not a Jew. Heck, I don’t really know what I am. But she made me happy every, mostly, day.

    I just don’t get why people don’t seem to like Jews. I’ve never had a problem. I do have a problem with Jew haters. That’s easier for me to define.

    RIP, my dear.

  • Andi

    They still managed to get over 20 million. That’s a lot of enchiladas.

  • Marbran

    “The total value of Columbia’s endowment as of June 30, 2024 was $14.8 billion, reflecting a return of 11.5% on the assets managed by Columbia University Investment Management Company.” – Columbia University IMC CEO, September 27, 2024

    And they have the gall to shake down their former students and other philanthropists for more money??

    Also Columbia:

    Tuition $68,000
    Mandatory Fees $3,170
    Average Room and Board Cost $17,580
    Books and Personal Expenses $3,992
    Travel varies
    Total $92,742 + Travel

  • DJ

    It appears that the Columbia “endowment” is “earning” $56,774/ per student/ per year. That amount plus the Pella grants and the Biden forgiveness plan would allow all students to have free tuition including all costs. And the Professors will continue to get richer.

  • Milt

    DESIDERATA

    However quixotic such thinking might appear, I would like to see at least one major university — and why not Columbia? — undertake some kind of an impartial, history and logic-driven study of what it might take to bring peace to the Middle East. Back in the dark ages,
    colleges were supposed to be places where difficult problems were addressed, and the best minds were called upon to master enough of
    various disciplines to make useful new contributions to society. Supporting all of this was the idea that given enough effort, human beings could solve pressing problems through open inquiry, rational analysis / reasoning, and some decent respect for the truth however it might emerge.

    No longer, and now it is all about “protest,” siding with the designated, politically correct victims, and demonstrating that the “best minds” seem to have left the building. Worse, “truth” (and whatever actions it might suggest) is now determined by ideological / political agendas, and the idea of having respectful conversations between people with divergent viewpoints is anathema. And people, as pointed out, are still donating their money to support this insanity.

    Nonetheless, it would be nice to imagine that — somewhere — the best and the brightest (from all sides) were actually talking about what will happen in the Middle East once a sufficient number of people are killed and their communities destroyed. In short, how do people “build peace” in the face of such a tragic history of seemingly endless tit for tat violence and recrimination? Just saying.

    Before piling on, think back to Europe and its own religious wars. How did these wars finally come to an end, and what, if anything, might be learnt from this history? Or is a lasting and durable peace simply too much for fallen human beings to accomplish even if we dare to imagine it?

  • Milt:

    “However quixotic such thinking might appear, I would like to see at least one major university — and why not Columbia? — undertake some kind of an impartial, history and logic-driven study of what it might take to bring peace to the Middle East.”

    There will never be peace in the middle east, not until the conquered, of whichever side, is made to either assimilate or is beaten down thoroughly that they pose no threat.

    The Palestinian people would probably choose to assimilate and live in peace but those zealots among them will never allow i. And so the ONLY solution is to remove those who refuse to accept the reality of their situation. And only then can a real-world degree peace be found.

    150 to 200 years ago, before the world was “Civilized” and before the likes of the U.N. and an army of lawyers existed this condition would have been solved and there would be some real measure of peace between the parties involved.

    A conquered people assimilate, or they are no more.

    And that model is attained through the exercise of power.

    So given that as being true in the American model of “Transforming America” and by extension the world I.E. Barak Hussein Obama, the apologizer in chief, who went a very long way in financially enriching and empowering the eastern powers that be and weakening the American position and military in his moralistic attempt to give an advantage to the philosophy that he is more aligned with.

    That is primarily IMO why we have what we have in the middle east.

    Chaos, war and death, all unnecessary.

    Political treason, there are consequences to elections.

    The question remains: Do we have elections or installations in America?

  • Jeff Wright

    This can only change by making sociology courses electives –that department wants to invest other programs (finance, engineering)…and it needs to stop.

  • Rockribbed1

    Universities supporting terrorism and Jew hatred must be sued by the Federal government for Title VI violations. They must lose all government financial support. No grants, no student loans and no research money.

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