UNC alumus speaks out against the anti-Semitism conference sponsored by UNC/Duke

Ryan Stone, adult son of Mark and Susie Stone, attended the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, where he earned his master’s degree. He shared on Facebook a letter he wrote to the school and wanted to share it with Heritage readers.

I’m so sad to have to write this post. Wanted to share a letter I just wrote on why I’m stopping recurring donations to the school.

To whom it may concern,

Please stop my recurring gift to UNC, specifically the Penny Oslund EMBA Fellowship Fund.

Several recent events at UNC have me BEYOND DEEPLY TROUBLED and make me question how I can support my alma mater since it is basically sanctioning anti-Semitism, using school and federal money to do it, and disguising it all as a exercise of academic freedom. You see, I just learned that on March 22-24, UNC hosted a very one-sided conference on Gaza.

https://mideast.unc.edu/event/conference-conflict-over-gaza-people-politics-and-possibilities/ and, perhaps even worse, had no issue with its money being used to support virulent anti-Semitism.

My wife’s side of the family lost almost everyone in the Holocaust. My grandparents both fought in WWII against the Nazis. I am a Jew. This is very personal to me.

You can watch this short video for details:

https://youtu.be/LW-coQd37-k (the entertainment at 2:20 or so is the icing on the cake—UNC’s money actually SUPPORTED THIS).

And all of this is on the heels of UNC having Linda Sarsour deliver a keynote address in February at the UNC Minority Health Conference.

Bottom line—UNC has lost my trust and respect. This is a disgrace; right now I’m ashamed to call it my alma mater, and it makes me sick that this kind of thing is not just tolerated but actually was sponsored by the university.

I greatly benefited from my education at UNC KFBS and have been a proud supporter of the business school and UNC in the past. While I’m glad the business school wasn’t one of the 38 departments co-sponsoring the event, I cannot continue to donate when it means I’m still helping UNC. I can’t believe I even just wrote that, but that’s how livid this makes me and I won’t just sit idly as a bystander and pretend this didn’t happen.

Having the interim Chancellor come out against the subsequent swastikas found on campus or the anti-Semitic fliers in the library this week entirely misses the point, as he/the university aren’t being held accountable for their responsibility in the situation. The university itself supports and encourages anti-Semitic behavior when they sponsor an event like that at the end of March, and given the recent history with Sarsour, this is clearly a trend and not just a one-off mistake in judgment.

Unfortunately, and with a great deal of personal regret, this means I have cancelled my attendance at my upcoming class reunion, I’ve withdrawn from an entrepreneurship panel that Professor Zoller invited me to participate in, and I am stopping my long-standing, recurring donations to UNC. I hope you understand my reasons why, and further hope that actions like mine can help the university leadership wake up and realize that they don’t just have an anti-Semitism problem; they are now complicit in helping cause it.

UNC can’t incite and sponsor hate and then claim to be neutral. The Chancellor’s words of being ‘extremely disappointed and appalled’ pale in comparison to and are in sharp contract with the actions of the university. Actions speak louder than words. And while it’s 2019, the environment is reminiscent of many stories I’ve studied about Germany in the 1930s. I won’t help history repeat itself.

Best,

Ryan

Stone included on his Facebook post a three-part article about the conference:

Part 1

http://www.thetower.org/7397-part-1-unc-duke-conference-on-gaza-whitewashes-hamas-blasts-israel

Part 2

http://www.thetower.org/7404-part-2-unc-duke-conference-on-gaza-whitewashes-hamas-blasts-israel

Part 3

http://www.thetower.org/7409-part-3-unc-duke-conference-on-gaza-whitewashes-hamas-blasts-israel