Friday is the day of the week when I share a quote meant to be informative or enlightening. Today's pithy words of wisdom come from Leon Cooperman, one of the many U.S. philanthropists who've been rethinking their donations to higher education in the wake of the orgy of Jew-baiting and antisemitism breaking out on America's college campuses.
Although he's been a political donor in the past (to Republicans and Democrats) I had never heard of Leon Cooperman until this week. I have now. He's a billionaire investor and hedge fund manager. Born, raised, and educated in New York City, Cooperman is the son of Jewish immigrants who came to this country from Poland in the 1920s.
In 2020, he explained in a television interview with CNBC that although he assumed Joe Biden's election would cost him significant money because of likely changes in the tax codes, he was voting for the Democratic ticket anyway. "I'm voting my values, not my pocketbook," he said.
And though he's no fan of Elizabeth Warren's tax-the-rich schemes, Cooperman doesn't pretend he got to the top all by himself. He's a signatory to The Giving Pledge, in which many of the world's richest individuals and families vow to give most of their fortunes away.
"I made a lot of money, I'm giving it away," he said simply. "That's the American Dream. I want to give others the opportunity to live the American Dream."
He's donated money in big chunks, too: $25 million to St. Barnabas Medical Center in 2014, and another $100 million to the same hospital in 2021. In 2011, he gave $25 million to Columbia University, the school where he earned his master's degree in business.
One assumes Cooperman has kept up his donations to Columbia, and perhaps was therefore more angered and appalled than most people when he saw that a Columbia professor had described the slaughter of 1,400 civilians in Israel as "awesome" and "astounding." Cooperman was less than impressed with the university's response. He's also taken note of the other pro-Hamas sentiments by students at other college campuses, which included pro-Palestinian demonstrators intimidating Jewish students in a library at Cooper Union -- and Cooperman expressed his disgust in appropriately salty language during an interview with Fox Business.
"I think these kids at the colleges have shit for brains," he said. "We have one reliable ally in the Middle East -- that's Israel. We only have one democracy in the Middle East -- that's Israel, okay? And we have one economy tolerant of different people -- gays, lesbians, etc. And that's Israel. So I have no idea what these young kids are doing."
The answer may be simple: They are parroting back what they're being taught at these colleges. In any event, Leon Cooperman's expression of frustration is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
