Tag Archives: Ivy League

Third Ivy League university president to resign over handling of Gaza war protests

Dr-Shafik

Important Takeaways:

  • Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position, four months after the institution was rocked by campus protests over the war in Gaza.
  • Dr Shafik’s resignation comes only a year after she took the position at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just a few weeks before the autumn semester is due to begin.
  • In April, Dr Shafik authorized New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, a controversial decision that led to the arrests of about 100 students who were occupying a university building.
  • The episode marked the first time that mass arrests had been made on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.
  • Her resignation comes after three Columbia University deans also resigned last week, after text messages showed the group used “antisemitic tropes”, according to a statement by Dr Shafik, while discussing Jewish students.
  • US college campuses have been a flashpoint for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Gaza Strip.
  • The presidents of Harvard and UPenn ultimately resigned amid backlash over their handling of campus protests and congressional testimony, including their refusal to say that calling for the deaths of Jews could violate university policy.

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U.S. charges former Harvard fencing coach, businessman with bribery scheme

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – A former Harvard University fencing coach and the chief executive of a telecommunications company were arrested on Monday on charges that they engaged in a bribery scheme aimed at securing the admission of the businessman’s two sons to the Ivy League school.

Federal prosecutors in Boston said that Jie “Jack” Zhao paid more than $1.5 million in bribes so that Peter Brand, the former coach, would help his sons get into Harvard by recruiting them to the men’s fencing team.

The charges followed an investigative report by the Boston Globe last year into how Brand sold his home to Zhao for over its assessed market value. Harvard in July 2019 fired the longtime coach following the report.

The Globe’s report came a month after federal prosecutors in March 2019 unveiled the first charges in the U.S. college admissions scandal, in which wealthy parents engaged in bribery and cheating schemes to secure spots for their children at selective universities.

That investigation has led to charges against 57 people, including celebrities and corporate executives. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling called the latest case “part of our long-standing effort to expose and deter corruption in college admissions.”

Lawyers for Brand and Zhao, who co-founded iTalk Global Communications Inc, did not respond to requests for comment.

Prosecutors said that in 2013, Zhao made a $1 million donation to a fencing charity operated by an unnamed co-conspirator that, in turn, contributed $100,000 to a foundation established by Brand and his wife.

Zhao also paid for Brand’s car, made college tuition payments for his son, paid the mortgage on his home and later bought the residence from the coach for above its market value, prosecutors said.

That purchase allowed Brand to buy a more expensive home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which Zhao paid to renovate, they said.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)