There was some internal discussion at the endowment about whether the university could lose its spot in future venture funds. Several people familiar with Harvard’s tour said it wasn’t driven by worries about Harvard losing allocations but by a desire to partner with its managers and answer questions about what was happening at the university.
Harvard executives in meetings last week said that the endowment wasn’t political and didn’t play a role in choosing Harvard’s president, said people familiar with the matter.
Executives also addressed frustration among some managers that Gay’s initial statement responding to the Hamas attacks had been too weak. That statement didn’t explicitly condemn Hamas or distance Harvard from a statement by student groups laying blame for Hamas’s violence on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians over decades. A follow-up statement condemned “the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas” and said student groups don’t speak for Harvard. Finnegan said that Gay had sought input from the deans of Harvard’s various schools and that the process had weakened the statement, signed by Gay and the school’s leadership.