After a backlash, Hillel International plans to withdraw an amicus brief it filed to support Harvard University, as the Ivy tries to preserve $2.7 billion in federal funding after the federal government said that it has failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, the Harvard Crimson, a student paper, reported.
Hillel filed the brief on Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, where the Trump administration is appealing a September ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts restoring $2.7 billion in federal funding to the university, according to the Crimson.
Hillel stated in its brief that the Trump administration’s cuts would not address Jew-hatred, and that Harvard took recent measures to address the matter, the student paper reported.
Kenneth Baer, a Hillel spokesman, told the paper that the brief had not gone through its “internal review process” and that it planned to withdraw the brief on Thursday morning.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a PragerU political commentator and former Harvard student who sued the university, stated on Wednesday that he was “shocked” that Hillel had filed the brief supporting the Ivy and called on Jewish donors to rescind funding.
He later stated that he talked to the CEO of Hillel, who agreed to retract the brief. “Public pressure works,” Kestenbaum wrote. “Any organization supporting anti-American, anti-Jewish campuses are all on notice.”
