APO - 'Big short' investor Eisman tells UPenn to remove his name from scholarship

2023-11-02 14:44:04 ET

Steve Eisman, the investor known for predicting the U.S. financial crisis in the book and movie The Big Short , told the University of Pennsylvania to remove his name from a scholarship he sponsored amid controversy over the school's response to the Hamas-Israel conflict.

Eisman, who met his wife at the Ivy League university in Philadelphia, said he created a small scholarship at the college about a dozen years ago.

"I called my contact and said I wanted our names removed from it immediately," Eisman, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, said in an interview on CNBC earlier on Thursday. "I do not want my family's name associated with the University of Pennsylvania ever."

Eisman said the only way to change his mind would be to fire the president of the university and the chairman "immediately."

"That's the only thing that would move me at all," Eisman said.

UPenn didn't immediately return a request for comment.

The executive's comments come after prominent hedge fund managers and others investors have called for changes at the University of Pennsylvania and other higher education institutions including Harvard University for their stance on the Israel-Hamas war, and a lack of condemnation against anti-semitism.

In September, Penn hosted the Palestine Writers Literature Festival, which featured "well-known antisemites and fomenters of hate and racism," including Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. The school did not condemn the event.

Apollo Group ( APO ) CEO Marc Rowan, who is on the board of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and is an alumnus, last month called for the school's president to step down, accusing the university of tolerating antisemitism.

“I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to ‘Close their Checkbooks’ until” President Elizabeth Magill and Scott Bok, chair of the board of trustees, step down, he wrote in a letter published last month.

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