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University of Chicago Gets $100 Million Free-Speech Gift From Anonymous Donor

(Bloomberg) -- The University of Chicago is receiving a $100 million donation to support the principles and practice of free expression, bolstering a shift at US colleges after a wave of campus turmoil spurred by the Israel-Hamas war. 

The gift came with an unusual twist for such a large sum, especially one designed to further free speech: The donor chose to remain anonymous. 

“Freedom of speech also includes the freedom not to speak,” said Tom Ginsburg, a law professor who directs Chicago’s year-old Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, which the donation will support. “The donor wants the institution to be celebrated rather than themselves.” 

Universities and their approach to free speech have been tested in the past year as students across the US, including at Chicago, set up encampments to protest Israel’s invasion of Gaza after a devastating Hamas attack on Oct. 7, and in some cases shouted antisemitic slogans and intimidated fellow students. Many elite colleges have faced criticism that they have tolerated hate speech directed at Jews and Israel, while aggressively censoring conservative voices.

Harvard University’s former president, Claudine Gay, was widely slammed by alumni for being slow to distance the school from student groups who blamed the Hamas attack solely on Israel shortly after the assault. Larry Summers, another ex-Harvard president, contrasted the delay with Gay’s powerful writing about the killing of George Floyd in 2020, when she was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

Presidential Resignations

Gay was later forced to resign after delivering widely derided testimony before Congress, where she failed to condemn calls for genocide against Jews as a violation of university policy. The heads of Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and Brandeis University have also resigned, in part over how they handled pro-Palestinian protests. 

Stanford University drew criticism last year when students shouted down a conservative judge invited by the Federalist Society, leading the university administration to issue an apology. 

Schools have tried to deescalate tensions by emphasizing their academic missions and adopting principles of institutional neutrality and open debate that have long been espoused at Chicago, which published the landmark Kalven Report on the matter in 1967. 

Harvard said in May that it would no longer issue statements on public matters that don’t “directly affect the university’s core function.” This month, Penn said it would refrain from comments on world events, while Yale appointed a committee this month to study the issue. 

“If the institution starts to take political positions and does so over and over again, then it increasingly sends a message to those who have a different viewpoint that they don’t belong there,” Paul Alivisatos, president of the University of Chicago, said in an interview. 

Conversations with the anonymous donor began about 18 months ago following the creation of Chicago’s free-speech forum, Alivisatos said. The forum held its inaugural events last year in early October, just before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. 

The gift will bolster programs such as talks about controversial topics, and the aim is for students to engage with each other, Ginsburg said. The forum also promotes faculty research, convenes gatherings with other colleges and helps create orientation materials for other schools around the country as they contend with heightened tensions on campus. 

“The antidote to that is having a place where reason and dialogue can be applied to this topic,” Alivisatos said. “How do we create environments of learning? How do we not fall susceptible to ideology or dogma?”

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