Jewish billionaire and philanthropist, Henry Swieca, has resigned from his seat on the board of Columbia’s prestigious Business School. 

In an October 30th letter obtained by the Sun, Mr. Swieca said, “The entire Columbia administration has failed to take a strong stance condemning Hamas” and that there are “blatantly anti-Jewish student groups and professors allowed to operate with complete impunity.” 

“I am compelled to disassociate myself from Columbia Business School and any other institution affiliated with Columbia University,” Mr. Swieca concluded.  

Mr. Swieca runs a family office invested in public securities, real estate, private equity, and venture capital, Talpion Fund Management. He was previously the founder and chief investment officer of a hedge fund, Highbridge Capital Management, which was later sold to JPMorgan Chase. His net worth, according to Forbes, is estimated to be $1.9 billion dollars.

The financier’s name has since been removed from the long list of board members on the Columbia Business School website as of Wednesday. The board still has a large number of prominent Jewish members.

Mr. Swieca’s resignation comes amid several incidents involving anti-Israel activism at the Ivy League university. On October 26, Columbia’s undergraduate student newspaper reported that several hundred members of the Columbia community walked out to encourage the University to disaffiliate from Israel. Participants chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” On Tuesday night, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was censured by the House for her embrace of the slogan, which she called “aspirational.”

It was this chant in particular, Mr. Swieca wrote in his letter, that was a major impetus for his own disaffiliation from the university. “Statements from the University are meaningless when pro-Hamas students march on campus yelling slogans calling for the complete destruction of Israel– that’s exactly what is meant by ‘from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea,” the billionaire stated. “Any other minority group on campus would never have to face anything close to this level of intimidation and hatred.”  

In addition to the anti-Israel walkout, Columbia has been in an unflattering spotlight due to several other incidents in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 terror attacks on Israel. A petition with more than 70,000 signatures called on a Middle Eastern Studies Professor, Joseph Massad, to be removed after referring to the October 7 attacks as a “resistance offensive” to “Israeli settler-colonialism and racism toward the Palestinians.” In another incident, a 19-year-old Columbia student, Maxwell Friedman, was arrested for assaulting a pro-Israel student on campus who was filmed vandalizing posters of kidnapped Israelis. 

Mr. Swieca’s resignation follows Columbia Business School alumnus and hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman stopping his donations. Mr. Cooperman, who has donated a total of $50 million dollars to the school, said its  students had “sh-t for brains” in an interview with Fox Business News.