Businessman Steve Eisman demanded his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), remove his name from a scholarship fund after seeing an interview with another alum following a Penn-hosted event called “The Palestine Writer’s Literature Festival.”
The charismatic hedge fund manager, famously portrayed by Steve Carrell in “The Big Short,” said he was inspired by fellow Penn alum, hedge fund manager Mark Rowan, who sat down with CNBC in October and demanded Penn fire its leadership.
“A couple of days after the interview, I called my contact person at the university, and I said, you know, we have a small scholarship that we created about a dozen years ago, and I called my contact and said [that] I wanted our names removed immediately,” Eisman told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday. “I do not want my family’s name associated with the University of Pennsylvania. Ever.”
“We have a small scholarship we created at @Penn. I wanted our names removed from it immediately. I don’t want my family’s name associated with the University of Pennsylvania ever,” says Steve Eisman. “Dressed up in the clothing of progressiveness is the pure hatred of Jews.” pic.twitter.com/VQK7uDIQjJ
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) November 2, 2023
“My history with the University of Pennsylvania is pretty deep,” Eisman said. “I went there, my wife went there, we met there. My sister went there, my brother-in-law went there and they met there. So a lot of members of my family have been there. I’ve gone back to the university many times to speak.” (RELATED: Here Are University Donors Pulling Their Support After Schools Initially Failed To Condemn Hamas)
Eisman said there was only one way to change his mind: “You could fire the president and the chairman of the board of trustees immediately.” Though Eisman expressed doubt that would happen, he said it’s “that’s the only thing that would move me at all.”
“What we have in the protestors right now is, dressed up in the clothing of progressivism is pure hatred of Jews,” Eisman added. “Any student who holds up a sign that says ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea’ should be expelled. That’s not free speech, that’s calling for murder,” he concluded.
Eisman joins a host of other prominent alumni pulling funding from Penn in the weeks following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Rowan, computer scientist David Magerman and former U.S. Ambassador to China John Huntsman Jr. have all declined to send money to the school, citing the administration’s alleged reluctance to strongly support Israel in the wake of the attack.