UPenn donors were furious about the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. What about it made them pull their funds?

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — The University of Pennsylvania’s administration faces an overwhelming backlash from donors, many of whom are pulling their funds and calling on the Ivy League institution’s president to resign. The root of their anger: A Palestine Writes Literature Festival that took place on campus last month that donors and Penn’s administration both say included speakers with a history of making antisemitic statements, a characterization organizers and attendees reject.

Many donors have said in letters obtained by CNN that they complained to Penn President Liz Magill in advance of the September 22 through September 24 festival and urged her to forcefully condemn the festival and its speakers. A month before it took place, the Anti-Defamation League also raised concerns to Magill about the festival, which was not organized by the university.

But organizers and attendees say the festival was to celebrate and promote Palestinian culture and Palestinians, an oppressed people who don’t have the ability to access their homeland, through music and art and literature. Reading poetry about their ancestors and calling out Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories shouldn’t be conflated with hatred and antisemitism, they said.

Although the university issued a statement prior to the festival condemning antisemitism, it maintained it has a responsibility to uphold the free exchange of ideas on its campus. The festival was not a student-led event, though students from UPenn and around the Philadelphia area were involved in organizing and volunteering.

Following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, donors’ simmering animosity toward the administration and its president reached a boiling point. Magill has since further distanced Penn from the festival and said she and the university should have more quickly condemned the speakers’ views.

But what did the speakers say that got the donors so upset? And what actually took place at the festival, which happened weeks before the Hamas attack on Israel?

A history of controversial remarks

ADL Philadelphia and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia sent a letter that was posted on the Palestine Writes site to Magill in August expressing “deep concern” that speakers at the event could invoke antisemitic tropes.

The organization specifically called out Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd lyricist, who appeared at the festival via Zoom. The ADL cited concerts Rogers performed in Germany in May, where “he dressed in a Nazi-like uniform and shot a prop machine gun into the audience” and “desecrated the memory of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.”

The US State Department also accused Waters of using antisemitic tropes.

Magill responded to the ADL on September 20, calling Waters’ inclusion in the festival, “deeply offensive, misaligned with the festival’s stated purpose, and stands in direct opposition to our institutional values.” However, Magill in the letter defended the festival, noting Penn’s commitment to “open expression and academic freedom.”

In response to the criticism, Waters posted a statement in May saying the performance is “quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms… The depiction of an unhinged fascist demagogue has been a feature of my shows since Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ in 1980.”

Waters has consistently denied he is antisemitic, and described that performance in Germany as a “parody.”

“We do not view [Waters] as antisemitic and we did not hesitate to have him as a participant in our festival,” organizer Tala El-Fahmawi said to CNN. “He has stood as an opponent to war crimes and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which as we know does not equate to antisemitism.”

Democratic New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer called out Waters and former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill, with whom CNN severed ties after controversial comments he made about Israel. Gottheimer criticized UPenn for including Waters and Hill as festival speakers in a letter posted the day after the University released its statement.

“Palestine Writes was a wonderful experience,” Hill said, where he hosted a panel on journalism and participated in one on the Global South. CNN has reached out to Hill for comment.

The ADL letter also raised concerns about three previous tweets from the festival’s director, Susan Abulhawa. In one tweet, she called Israel “one big militarized tumor.” CNN has reached out to Abulhawa for comment on these tweets.

Organizers contended that criticizing the state of Israel did not equate to antisemitism or hatred of Jewish people.

In a letter in response to  Magill on September 2, the organizers said, “We categorically reject this cynical, sinister, and ahistorical conflation of bigotry with the moral repudiation of a foreign state’s criminality, particularly as most of us are victims of that state,” adding the examples all refer to Israel or Zionism. “Situating those individual Palestinians and our allies in league with actual antisemites is wholly irresponsible and dangerous.”

At the festival, speakers acknowledged the allegations of antisemitism and denied them.

“We are full of love,” comedian Amer Zahr said as he opened the festival. “We do not hate anybody for who they are. We hate occupation. We hate apartheid. We hate racism. We don’t hate people. We love everybody. Our movement of Palestinian justice from the day it started, has been about love.”

The event opened with a dabke performance, a folk dance that originated in the region.

Abulhawa welcomed attendees who were there to “surveil and monitor.”

“We’re sure you’re here and you’re welcome as long as you do not attempt to disrupt or sabotage any part of this festival. Palestine Writes is meant to be an inclusive space for anyone who wishes to engage with the stories, heritage, culture, history, and the realities of Palestine, a storied place of an ancient people,” she said.

Billionaire Ronald Lauder, a powerful financial backer of the university, said he had two people taking photos at the Palestine Writes festival and two more who listened to the speakers, “who were, to no one’s surprise, both antisemitic and viscerally anti-Israel.” However, he did not specify what was said and the number of speakers who made those types of statements. CNN has reached out to Lauder’s representatives for further details.

CNN has also reached out to ADL Philadelphia to determine if anyone reported incidents of antisemitism at the event. CNN has not been able to corroborate or gain specific information on any of the specific claims made by the donors during the festival. Only the opening session on Friday was filmed and posted in its entirety.

In an op-ed published by Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, one of the UPenn’s wealthiest donors, he claimed the event focused on “Jews, Israel and Zionism” instead of Palestinian culture. He claimed one unnamed speaker advocated for ethnic cleansing and gathering all Jewish people into “cantons” and that numerous speakers “repeated various blood libels against Jews.”

CNN did not see any examples of ethnic cleansing or “cantons” in clips it has seen of the festival.

But in a response to Rowan in The Daily Pennsylvanian, chair of UPenn’s Board of Trustees Scott Bok said that based on multiple accounts nothing suggests “the reprehensible comments that Rowan describes in his letter. If anything like this was said, we of course strongly condemn it.”

Abulhawa directed CNN to Bok’s op-ed and the festival’s public statements when asked about the allegations.

What was said at the festival

The Palestine Writes Literature Festival included almost 80 sessions on a variety of topics about Palestinian culture, from poetry readings to arts and craft sessions for children. Organizers and attendees described the vast age range at the conference, from young children to the elderly.

The three-day long festival included dancing, poetry, readings and workshops from some of the most “biggest and most celebrated literary voices in the Arab World,” according to a letter from Abulhawa. The event’s organizers said it was designed to celebrate the Palestinian diaspora, and those who want to learn about the region could come together in a cultural moment to celebrate a shared identity.

Attendance was over capacity in the 1,200-person auditorium. One Palestinian attendee, Dalia Al-Ahmad, said it was the “best event I’ve ever been to, I never felt so seen.”

One session taught the language and history of Palestinian dress, tatreez, a centuries-old embroidery technique. There were storytimes with numerous authors, whose works range from children’s books to an anthology of queer Arab writers.

Featured speakers included some of the most celebrated writers in the Arab world on Palestine — Ibrahim Nasrallah, Elias Khoury, Mahmoud Shukair and Huzama Habayeb — the organization wrote in a letter to the school.

Some events took a more political tone — such as a session with researcher Salman Abu Sitta on the Palestinian right of return, the political position that all Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes in modern Israel. The UN General Assembly affirmed this right in via resolution in 1948. Another event highlighted Palestinian people’s history of resistance “in the face of colonialism” based on its geographic location between two continents and near Europe.

In the opening session, Abulhawa analyzed the revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who penned the anguish of exile and rejected antisemitic claims, a resistance poet who spoke Hebrew.

“Just as it seemed inconceivable to our parents and grandparents that Europeans could steal an entire country where we are deeply rooted, many of Darwish’s contemporaries likewise could not imagine someone actually colonizing our own stories,” Abulhawa said.

“If you tell people you’re Palestinian, it’s not as simple, you’re saying a statement,” Dalia Al-Ahmad said, who traveled from Canada to attend. “We had our community come together, and just to celebrate us in our history, in our people.”

A panel that included Roger Waters, the main lyricist for Pink Floyd, was called “The Cost, Reward, & Urgency of Friendship.” He was joined by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sympathizer,” and Gary Younge, a British journalist and writer.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that there is no evidence Nguyen or Younge, who appeared on the panel with Waters, hold antisemitic views.

92NY, a prestigious New York City Jewish cultural center, abruptly pulled Nguyen’s event last week about his new memoir after he signed an open letter criticizing Israel, the author confirmed on Instagram. The talk’s organizer, Bernard Schwartz, who has been with 92NY since 2005, moved it to a local bookstore instead. He told the New York Times  the decision by 92NY was “unacceptable.”

“I have no regrets about anything I have said or done in regards to Palestine, Israel, or the occupation and war,” Nguyen said on Instagram, highlighting the New York Times headline that said the 92NY’s actions drew criticism for “stifling voices it disagrees with.”

Indeed, Nguyen’s talk at Palestine Writes drew parallels between different occupations throughout history.

“This panel of non-Palestinian distinguished personalities, all of whom have publicly expressed solidarity with Palestinian liberation, will talk about what that friendship has meant in their professional and personal lives,” the site’s program said.

CNN watched the session, which was livestreamed on  Facebook. The topics discussed included how Palestine came into the consciousness of the speakers, solidarity among different groups and the legacy of imperialism and the American Dream.

In the recording of the segment, Israeli statehood was not mentioned. Jewish people were also not mentioned, though Waters said he attempted to come in person when the media, “nearly all Jewish papers,” questioned how the school allowed him to attend.

The University said organizers for the festival confirmed from the beginning Waters would attend virtually. It said they were notified 48 hours before the event Waters wished to show up in person, but that would have required additional security unavailable at short notice.

‘Felt like home’

Planning the Palestine Writes Literature Festival took endless hours, according to Abulhawa.

“We came together to celebrate the cultural productions of Palestinians and other indigenous peoples,” organizer Tala El-Fahmawi said. “It was a really beautiful space where we came together to celebrate our culture, our people to reflect on our history, and to just be together.”

For the Palestinian diaspora, most of whom cannot access their homeland, the event left them “in tears,” Abulhawa said. Without a physical place, the culture and the arts passed down through generations are often all the diaspora can turn to.

“We wanted to honor our ancestors, celebrate our heritage. Discuss our books, talk about our predicament. Talk about resistance, talk about politics and power and culture and song and books and food, and all of the things that a moment, that an intellectual creative moment would contain,” Abulhawa said in a previous interview with CNN.

Abulhawa said skeptics were welcome. “It’s still driving (critics) crazy, because they cannot bear this moment of agency,” she said.

El-Fahmawi heard from numerous attendees that they felt like they were home.

“Palestine isn’t accessible to us, I can never go home. My grandparents could not go home,” El-Fahmawi said. “To be able to hear that and have people feel that they were home in the environment that we created was really powerful.”

El-Fahmawi said she and other organizers dedicated thousands of unpaid hours for the festival, digging into their own pockets to fund some parts of it.

“In this case, large donors tried to use their money to make sure that Palestinian voices were not heard on campus,” she said when asked if the festival expected this level of backlash from donors.

A firestorm of controversy

Groups on campus and off raised concerns about some speakers who they said had made antisemitic statements before the festival began. Student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian first reported backlash for the festival starting in early September.

“As is routine in universities, individual faculty, departments and centers, and student organizations are engaged as sponsors, speakers and volunteers at this conference intended to highlight the importance and cultural impact of Palestinian writers and artists,” UPenn said in a September 12  statement.

However, the university also condemned antisemitism and acknowledged in the statement that many people brought up “several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people.”

“We unequivocally – and emphatically – condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values,” the statement said.

Magill issued an updated statement on October 15, calling the attacks from Hamas a “terrorist assault.” She distanced the school from the literature festival.

“The University did not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views,” the statement read. “While we did communicate, we should have moved faster to share our position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community.”

The festival responded on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling UPenn’s statement “cowardly, immoral, and dishonest.”

Venture capitalist David Magerman last week called for all “self-respecting” Jews to cut off funding to the Ivy League school. Hedge fund billionaire Cliff Asness, another major backer of UPenn, similarly halted donations, as have Lauder, Rowan, Law & Order creator Dick Wolf and other prominent donors.

Magerman, a UPenn graduate known for building trading algorithms at hedge fund giant Renaissance Technologies, posted a letter on Tuesday sent to UPenn leaders in which he took issue with the public posture of Magill’s administration, which said they would “uphold the right of public events and free speech,” and her initial response to the terror attacks on Israel.

Rowan called for the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania to resign and donors to close their checkbooks over an alleged failure to condemn antisemitism and hate. Former US ambassador Jon Huntsman also promised to halt his family’s donations.

UPenn leaders said in a statement Oct. 10 they were “devastated by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas.”

“These abhorrent attacks have resulted in the tragic loss of life and escalating violence and unrest in the region,” UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and UPenn Provost John Jackson, Jr., said in that statement.

In an interview on CNBC, Rowan argued the central issue was not free speech, but failing to forcefully condemn the festival.

“That condemnation should not be so hard. Unfortunately, if you lack moral courage, it is hard,” Rowan said.

Yet former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a graduate of UPenn, told CNN that Magill made a “mistake” in failing to immediately condemn alleged antisemitic remarks by the festival speakers – but said she should not resign.

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CNN’s Matt Egan contributed to this report.