A long time Columbia University donor blasted the abhorrent outpouring of student and faculty support for Hamas terrorism against Israel.
Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman announced on The Claman Countdown on Oct. 26 that he was cutting Columbia University off after some grotesque displays of anti-Semitism. He took a parting shot at students supporting the genocidal Hamas aggressors: "I think that these kids at the colleges have sh-t for brains!" In response to the behavior of students and student groups, Cooperman announced that his long history of giving to the Ivy League university was over. Cooperman said, “Now, the real shame is I’ve given to Columbia probably about $50 million over many years,” before adding, “I’m going to suspend my giving. I’ll give my giving to other organizations.” The university is the home of the radically left-wing publication Columbia Journalism Review.
"These kids at the colleges have sh-t for brains!"
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 26, 2023
Billionaire who has donated $50 million to Columbia University says he is suspending his donations after the school refused to fire a professor who called the Hamas attacks “awesome." pic.twitter.com/vCeEPqg7cz
After Hamas terrorists brutally slaughtered at least 1400 men, women and children in Israel, Columbia Professor Joseph Massad referred to the terrorist attack as “awesome.” In an article written for “Electronic Intifada,” an outlet named after previous anti-Israel terrorists attacks, Massad wrote: “The sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding.” Cooperman called on the University to fire Massad: “To praise what Hamas did is disgraceful — disgusting.”
Massad’s article was replete with praise for the terrorists. One subsection headlined “jubilation and awe,” referred to the terrorist attack as “staggering” and “astonishing.” Massad also attacked the Jewish people’s right to exist in any part of Israel, as he referred to Israelis who lived outside of Gaza and the West Banks as “colonizers” and their towns as “colonies.” He celebrated that Israelis’ faith in their military to protect them might be shaken and wrote that, “In the interest of safeguarding their lives and their children’s future, the colonists’ flight from these settlements may prove to be a permanent exodus. They may have finally realized that living on land stolen from another people will never make them safe.”
One donor who is unlikely to abandon Columbia University over this issue is anti-Israel leftist billionaire George Soros. Soros gave at least $1,335,559 to Columbia University from 2016 to 2017.
Columbia University should be ashamed of itself.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Columbia University — home of Columbia Journalism Review — at (212) 854-5573 and tell it to vigorously denounce support for Hamas.
