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Israel-Hamas war

COLLEGES UNDER SIEGE OVER ISRAEL, HAMAS AND ANTISEMITISM, LOOK TO PR GIANTS FOR
HELP

Some of the top firms, mainly in Democratic politics, are getting calls for help
from major universities.

Two major university presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard, left, and Liz Magill
of the University of Pennsylvania, have resigned from their posts under immense
political pressure following their testimony before Congress. | Kevin
Dietsch/Getty Images

By Hailey Fuchs, Daniel Lippman and Michael Stratford

01/07/2024 07:00 AM EST

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Some of the nation’s top universities are scrambling to hire heavyweight
communications firms as their campuses become consumed by cultural and political
proxy fights stemming from the Israel-Hamas war.

Among the schools that have turned to firms for help in recent months: New York
University, Harvard University, Columbia University, The Cooper Union and the
University of California. Those academic institutions sought help from trained
PR or communications professionals in navigating student protests, unrest from
donors or government inquiries borne from how the schools have handled the
conflict in the Middle East, according to six people familiar with the
arrangements.

The decision to do so underscores just how delicate the campus debates have
become in recent weeks. Already, two major university presidents, Claudine Gay
of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, have resigned from
their posts under immense political pressure following their testimony before
Congress, in which they offered lawyerly responses to how they’d treat calls for
the genocide of Jews.

Their performance, it should be noted, had the help of high-powered outside
advisors — an indication that consultants don’t always solve problems but
sometimes do create them.

Still, academic leaders have struggled to find the right response to campus
protests over Israel’s military campaign and concerns among other parts of the
student body about rising antisemitism. Media attention and political scrutiny
have amplified, with House Republicans launching an investigation into how
universities are handling antisemitism.

While much of the pressure being applied to universities is coming from
conservatives, the schools themselves have turned to Democratic-allied firms for
help.

New York University, where in October the law school’s student bar association
president quickly blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, enlisted veteran
Democratic consulting firm SKDK — whose clients have included President Joe
Biden’s 2020 campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — to
help with the university’s internal and external responses around the war and
related issues.

The work included advice around issues with donors, students and government
officials’ inquiries around antisemitism, according to a person close to SKDK
who requested anonymity to discuss the firm’s work. The firm declined to
comment. The university’s official work with SKDK began around December, when
three of its peer universities appeared before the House Education and the
Workforce Committee for a hearing on antisemitism.

The Cooper Union, the New York City school where Jewish students huddled in a
library during a pro-Palestinian protest in October, also brought in SKDK to
help it navigate fallout from that incident. The firm helped the college respond
to a media inquiry from The Messenger.

Harvard University has turned to another Democratic firm, Precision, to help it
handle fallout from turmoil over pro-Palestinian protests on campus in the wake
of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The school was engulfed in controversy for weeks
over its response to campus groups that said they held Israel “entirely
responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Education

Former Harvard president blames ‘demagogues’ for her downfall

By Olivia Alafriz | January 03, 2024 06:40 PM

The firm, which had a pre-existing relationship with the school, provided
communications support after Oct. 7 to help with the crisis on campus, two
people familiar with the arrangement said. The school also has turned to PR
behemoth Edelman and the firms of former Chuck Schumer aides Risa Heller and
Alex Levy.

Columbia University has leaned on the consulting giant FGS Global, with which it
has had a working relationship going back several years, according to a Columbia
spokesperson. As part of the contract, the firm has helped out with
communications support in dealing with issues affecting the university since
Oct. 7. Columbia suspended pro-Palestinian groups in November for events that
violated university policies, including one that “‘proceeded despite warnings
and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation,’” according to an email
cited by the school’s student newspaper the Columbia Daily Spectator.

The University of California reached out to a firm run by a prominent Democratic
operative for counsel on its own handling of the unfolding cultural battles,
according to the Democratic operative who was granted anonymity to discuss
private conversations. But that person’s firm does not currently work for the
school, and a university spokesperson said it was “not aware of any external
entities being engaged” through the president’s office.

A number of these firms brought into the fold have close ties to the Biden
administration. SKDK co-founder Anita Dunn is now senior adviser to the
president. Precision was founded by Obama and Biden world operatives.

Ken Spain, a Republican partner of the firm Narrative Strategies, said the
decision to turn to Democratic-allied firms illustrated how insular the
universities are.

“Ironically, and unsurprisingly, the challenge these universities are facing is
their lack of political diversity when it comes to seeking outside advisement,”
he said. “A crisis of this magnitude requires a holistic strategy, and right now
they seem to be several steps behind each news cycle, and that’s largely because
they are stuck in their own echo chamber.”

That perspective was echoed by a longtime Republican lobbyist who works on
education policy who said the challenges elite universities are having in
Washington in recent months are precisely because they aren’t exposed to
alternative political viewpoints.

“Nobody ever talks to Republicans. They don’t even know how to have a
conversation with them,” the lobbyist said. “They talk to themselves a lot but
not as much to the outside world.”

Harvard, FGS Global, Precision and Levy declined to comment. NYU and The Cooper
Union did not respond to requests for comment.

Stacy Kerr, a partner at the public affairs firm Penta Group and former Nancy
Pelosi aide, said universities are scrambling for professional communications
help because they are dealing with new outside forces. Kerr, who served as chief
communications officer at Georgetown University, said schools had approached
her, looking for help in the wake of Oct. 7. Her firm works with some
universities, and she has also been consulting with university leaders, but she
declined to say who.

Historically, higher education has not relied heavily on public affairs support,
beyond lobbying for government funding, she said. But Kerr added that
universities were the next battleground in a larger culture war, and schools
were now trying to catch up.

“In an industry that has not historically hired and relied on a lot of outside
perspective, you’re now seeing a race and a scramble to gain outside perspective
because there’s new groups of stakeholders now pressuring and threatening the
sustainability of these university presidents’ jobs or in some cases, the
reputation of the university,” she said.

The use of outside PR help comes as elite higher education brace for a continued
onslaught of scrutiny in the coming months. The House is set to vote on a
bipartisan deal in the coming weeks that would direct federal funding away from
wealthy universities toward short-term job training programs. And there is
growing bipartisan interest in imposing new restrictions on colleges’ foreign
sources of revenue.

House votes to condemn campus antisemitism

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In addition, House GOP leaders are gearing up to use their gavels to scrutinize
higher education. The House education committee announced plans to investigate
colleges for their handling of antisemitism after lawmakers already held several
hearings last year.

Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary who now runs his own PR
firm, said that universities won’t solve their PR issues with conservatives by
hiring firms that don’t know how to talk to right-leaning Americans.

“The problem is if the perception is these universities are out of touch because
they have become left-wing citadels and fortifications, hiring left-wing PR
firms to build a better fortification is the last thing that they need to do,”
he said.

“The fundamental problem is that these major universities would rather make it
through the night, rather than solve their long-term problems,” Fleischer added.
“They want to paper over their immediate problems, hope that the temperature of
the water drops below boiling and then go back to what they were always doing.”

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