CEOs and Bill Ackman receive backlash for refusing to hire anti-Israel Harvard students, criticized as ‘demonizing’ students

Numerous company executives and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman announced their plans never to hire any members of the student groups at Harvard University who signed an anti-Israel letter following the Hamas terrorist attack.

“I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to [ensure] that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members,” Ackman said on social media on Tuesday.

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“I would like to know so I know never to hire these people,” Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman responded to Ackman.

“Share the list, please. We’ll stay away,” Belong CEO Ale Resnik said on social media.

New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz criticized the CEOs on Wednesday.

“Personally, I think it is bad for major employers to work in concert to blacklist young people for political speech, including speech I disagree with,” Levitz said.

Resnik pushed back, “LMAO. What? You would hire an openly Nazi white supremacist?”

Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary and president emeritus at Harvard, dismissed Ackman’s efforts to boycott Harvard students.

“I think Bill’s getting a bit carried away,” Summers said to Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. “It’s not a time for demonizing students who weren’t careful or were silly in what they did.”

He added, “Bill’s entirely right, and I would do the same thing as he does in wanting to make sure that the people I hired weren’t people who stood with hate, but asking for lists of names is the stuff of Joe McCarthy.”

Journalist John Hasson posted a list of Harvard students supporting Hamas’s invasion of Israel.

Ackman and other CEOS are not the only ones rejecting students blaming Israel for Hamas’s attacks.

New York-based law firm Winston & Strawn withdrew a job offer to a New York University student who had published “inflammatory” comments condemning Israel on Monday.

“Today, Winston & Strawn learned that a former summer associate published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association,” the firm said in a statement posted on social media.

“These recent comments are profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment,” the law firm said.

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk noted how Harvard’s student groups ignore the enormous donations that fund their university.

“In February 2020, Harvard Business School got its largest ever gift, $200 million, from Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian Jew. Bill Ackman, of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, has given tens of millions to Harvard. There are thousands of others like them. Jews are some of the most generous funders of America’s universities,” Kirk said on social media. “Stop subsidizing your own demise by supporting institutions that breed Anti-Semites and endorse genocidal killers.”

Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, now the president of the University of Florida, was unequivocal about the university’s stance on the attacks on Israel and handled it differently than other universities navigating the issue.

“The University of Florida is home to the largest number of Jewish students at any university in this country. We are honored by and committed to that legacy. Our Jewish students and alumni around the world have been devastated by Hamas’ terrorism,” Sasse said in a statement.

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“I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard,” Sasse said in a letter to students and teachers at the university. “Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to “provide context” and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother.”

“In other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists. This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening. It’s dehumanizing,” Sasse continued. “It is beneath people called to educate our next generation of Americans.”