Dave Portnoy doubles down on not hiring from Harvard, MIT, UPenn
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Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy doubled down on his promise not to hire applicants from Harvard, MIT and UPenn following a disastrous congressional testimony where the heads of these high-profile universities failed to condemn on-campus antisemitism.
“There’s a difference between free speech and hate speech, and when you’re endangering people and causing harm, I think you got to put a stop to it. It’s called common sense,” Portnoy told Fox Business on Tuesday.
“If you can’t condemn genocide — I don’t care whether we’re talking Jews, Muslims, any group of people — then you don’t deserve to be in a position of power,” Portnoy added. “You got to get out.”
The 46-year-old was seemingly suggesting that Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth should step down from their respective positions.
The University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill stepped down on Sunday after mounting pressure from both donors and the White House following the testimony, when she was repeatedly asked if calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate her university’s rules on bullying and harassment.
“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill said.
Meanwhile, Harvard said on Tuesday that its embattled president Gay will keep her job — even after reportedly losing more than $1 billion in donations since her catastrophic congressional testimony about antisemitism.
“It was disgusting what those deans and presidents did under oath. It makes no sense to me,” Portnoy said of the congressional testimony.
When Fox asked Portnoy about concerns over free speech, Portnoy responded: “Is Hitler allowed to say, ‘I want to kill the Jews,’ ‘I want to kill the Jews,’ ‘I want to kill the Jews’ right up until he kills the Jews? I would say no.”
Portnoy also clarified that though he doesn’t plan on hiring any Harvard, MIT and UPenn graduates in the future, there’s already two Harvard athletes on Barstool’s payroll: former hockey player Sam Bozoian and ex-lacrosse player Francis Ellis.
“They’re grandfathered in,” Portnoy told Fox.
Portnoy’s comments on Tuesday amplify a stance he made on Instagram last week, when he shared a video clip from the controversial testimony captioned: “This video has made me so irate I need to make sure as many people see it as possible.”
In the week since the video has been posted, Portnoy’s post on the social media site — where he goes by @stoolpresidente — has been viewed over 10 million times.
He went on to say he would no longer consider hiring applicants who attended any of the three schools until they made leadership changes, and he urged other businesses to do the same.
“Not that this will make a huge difference but moving forward I will not hire any student who graduates from any of these schools until these Deans step down,” Portnoy wrote, noting he would not make exceptions for Jewish applicants from the institutions.
Portnoy continued in the caption: “The Deans of 3 supposedly prestigious Universities in the United States somehow refusing to condemn students calling for the Genocide of Jews on campus. AKA – the murder of all Jews. Newsflash that is calling for the murder of myself, my parents and my entire family. And these ‘leaders’ refuse to condemn this as hate speech on their campuses?”
He claimed Jewish students are the only minority group that other students “could openly intimidate and chant that they want to murder an entire group of people and not get kicked out immediately or better yet thrown in jail.”
Jewish students at UPenn are now saying that the resignation of Magill and Chairman Scott Bok was not enough to make them feel safe following a series of antisemitic incidents, arguing that further “change” at the school was necessary.
“There’s a realization that one step is over,” junior Akiva Berkowitz told USA Today outside of Steinhardt Hall, home to the school’s Hillel club. “But the process is not and I don’t want people to think this is the end.”
Sophomore Jack Cohen said despite Magill and Bok’s resignation, “It’s not comfortable here” and demanded that more be done.
“At the end of the day, we want to see more change,” he said. “We want to feel more supported.”
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