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Lives Lived: Notable New Yorkers who died in 2023
(New York Jewish Week) — Before we look ahead to the New Year, the New York Jewish Week is looking back on the lives of 20 Jewish New Yorkers who, in their own way, each made their mark on public life through their contributions to the arts, writing, advocacy, music and religious life. May their memories be a blessing.
Bob Born
Jewish maker of Peeps marshmallow candies
A “Peeps Mobile” at the Just Born candy factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (Andrew Silow-Carroll)
Ira “Bob” Born was the head of the 100-year-old family candy company Just Born Quality Confections, where the Jewish Willy Wonka innovated one very un-Jewish treat: Peeps marshmallows, a staple of Easter baskets. Just Born also makes Mike and Ikes and Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. Born’s father, Sam Born, was a rabbinical student from Ukraine who learned the art of chocolate-making when his family fled to Paris. The elder Born opened a factory and chocolate store in Brooklyn in 1923,the year before his son, Bob, was born. The family relocated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1932, where the company is still headquartered. Born died on Jan. 29 at age 98. His son, Ross, told the local newspaper that his father will be remembered as a “real mensch.”
Burt Bacharach
Sophisticated hitmaker of the 60s and 70s
Composer Burt Bacharach (left) and lyricist Hal David hold Oscars they won for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” at the Academy Awards, April 7, 1970. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
The songwriter behind the slew of songs that made Dionne Warwick a megastar, including “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “I Say a Little Prayer,” Burt Bacharach grew up in a Jewish family in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens. He wrote in his memoir that “no one in my family ever went to synagogue or paid much attention to being Jewish,” although Jonathan Freedman, author of “Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity,” told the New York Jewish Week in 2013 that what made Bacharach’s music Jewish was his “wild play with time signatures.” Bacharach died on Feb. 8 at age 94.
Richard Belzer
Comedian and character actor who caused controversy
Richard Belzer attends the 90th birthday of Jerry Lewis, April 8, 2016. (John Lamparski/WireImage vis Getty)
Fans knew Richard Belzer for his character John Munch, the mopey, cerebral detective he played on shows like “Law and Order: SVU” and “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” But as a hard-working stand-up comedian, he infused his act with Jewish references and the occasional Yiddish-inflected parody of popular songs. “I’m a Jewish comedian, and there’s this new thing out, it’s called satire, irony and historical reference,” he said in response to criticism of a joke that leaned a little too hard into the Holocaust. Belzer died on Feb. 19 at age 78.
Elan Ganeles
Columbia graduate and IDF lone soldier killed in West Bank attack
Elan Ganeles. (Consulate General of Israel in New York/Twitter)
Friends remember Elan Ganeles as quiet, loyal, funny and down-to-earth. The West Hartford, Connecticut native grew up as a regular at the Young Israel synagogue near his home, where he often read Torah. He attended Hebrew High School of New England, Camp Gan Israel, was a member of NCSY and volunteered with Jewish Family Services. Ganeles enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in 2014 as a “lone soldier” before returning to the New York area in 2018, when he enrolled at Columbia University. He graduated in 2022. Ganeles was back in Israel for a wedding on Feb. 27 when he was killed by a gunman who shot at him on a road near the Palestinian West Bank city of Jericho. “He was the kind of guy you could call, and you’d be sure he’d pick up and have a few minutes to talk if you needed something,” said Rabbi Yehuda Drizin of Chabad at Columbia University, who knew Ganeles as an undergraduate there. “For everyone that knew him, this is a kick in the gut. This really hurts.” The 27-year-old was buried in Israel.
Judy Heumann
Jewish disability advocate who spurred a movement
Disability rights advocate Judith Heumann sits for a portrait in Washington, D.C., May 11, 2021. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
After contracting polio as a toddler, Judy Heumann spent the rest of her life charting new paths for wheelchair users. She broke down barriers for disabled children and educators in New York City public schools and helped pass federal legislation protecting people with disabilities. Heumann died March 4 at age 75. Born to Orthodox Jewish Holocaust survivors in Brooklyn, Heumann credits her parents’ background for their fierceness in advocating for her and insistence on keeping the family together. “The Jewish community has an obligation, I believe, to be leaders,” said Heumann, then a special advisor for international disability rights in the State Department, at a White House event in 2016. Jay Ruderman, whose family foundation supports Jewish disability inclusion, called her “one of the preeminent disability rights leaders in our country’s history and her accomplishments made our world a better place.”
Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter
Holocaust Survivor who revolutionized the bridal industry
Pictured left to right: Nancy Aucone, Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter, and granddaughter Chloe Schachter at the Wedding Salon of Manhasset. (Courtesy Ilana Schachter)
Before her Kleinfeld Bridal shop became known nationwide on the TV show “Say Yes to the Dress,” Hedda Kleinfeld Schachter had already made a name for herself in the bridal industry by bringing European designer wedding dresses to the U.S., and shifting her family business in Bay Bridge away from special occasion wear to exclusively bridal. Kleinfeld Schachter died in Manhattan on March 29. She was 99. She was born in Vienna in 1924 and left in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. Her family arrived in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 via Cuba. “She did not share a lot of experiences from that time period, but she did have happy memories of being a teenager in Havana, which I can only imagine was quite a trip,” said her granddaughter, Ilana Schachter. “I think she appreciated being a part of an industry that was about celebration.”
Seymour Stein
Music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones
Seymour Stein with David Byrne and Madonna in 1996. (KMazur/WireImage/Getty Images)
One of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, Seymour Stein helped put the industry’s biggest stars, including Madonna, The Ramones, The Smiths, The Cure and Talking Heads, on the map. Born Seymour Steinbigle in 1942 and raised near Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Stein co-founded Sire Records in 1966 and helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early 1980s. Along the way, he found camaraderie with other Jewish executives and stars. “It’s amazing now that so many doctors and lawyers are Jewish,” he said in a 2013 interview with Tablet magazine. “Jews in America weren’t allowed in those professions 120 years ago. Music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show business.” Stein died on April 2 at age 80.
Mimi Sheraton
Pioneering food critic and scholar of the bialy
Mimi Sheraton’s books include “1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die.” (Eric Etheridge/Workman Publishing)
The daughter of a Lower East Side grocer and the granddaughter of talented cook, Mimi Sheraton, born Miriam Solomon in Brooklyn in 1926, seemed destined for a life in food. After graduating from Midwood High School and New York University, Sheraton worked a slew of magazine jobs and became one of the best known food critics of her generation, penning 16 books in her six-decade career, including “The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World.” Sheraton died on April 6 at age 97. She was a contributing editor and critic for New York Magazine and became the first woman to serve as the New York Times’ chief restaurant critic in 1976. “The most prominent characteristic of her reviews was the vast amount of knowledge she brought to the job and the enlivened, precise language she used to convey that information,” wrote Charlotte Druckman, in her 2019 book “Women On Food.” “It was service journalism with expertise and voice.”
Al Jaffee
Iconic Mad Magazine cartoonist
Al Jaffee at an event at New York Comic Con, Oct. 6, 2017 in New York City. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Mad Magazine)
Best known for his back-of-the-book “Fold-In” features for Mad Magazine, cartoonist Al Jaffee and the self-described “usual gang of idiots” at the humor magazine shaped the sensibilities of many future comics. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish immigrant family in Savannah, Georgia in 1921, but moved back to his mother’s native Lithuania, staying just long enough to develop his love of comics (mailed to him by his father), Yiddish and “anti-adultism.” Jaffee died on April 10 in New York City at age 102. For nearly a decade, he also had a side gig as a cartoonist for The Moshiach Times, a Chabad-affiliated magazine, where he inked a cartoon called “The Shpy,” depicting a rabbinic secret agent who battles forces of evil.
Sheldon Harnick
The last surviving creator of “Fiddler on the Roof”
Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, circa 1995. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The American lyricist and composer Sheldon Harnick first encountered the stories of Sholem Aleichem as a teenager growing up in Chicago. At first, he wrote them off. But 20 or so years later, he found the writing “wonderfully human and moving and funny.” In the late 1950s Harnick began to work with Jerry Bock and Joe Stein to adapt the material for the stage; “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on Broadway in 1964 and ran for more than 3,200 performances, which stood as a Broadway record for a decade, and won multiple awards. “We hoped with any luck that it might run a year,” Harnick said in 1981 on “The Songwriters,” a PBS showcase series. “We were totally unprepared for the impact the show would have literally around the world.” Harnick died in Manhattan on June 23 at 99.
Alan Arkin
Jewish actor with uncommon versatility
Alan Arkin in 2007. (Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
The son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants, Alan Arkin wrote in his 2011 memoir “An Improvised Life” that he knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Arkin made a name for himself playing a wide variety of characters, from a conflicted Russian submarine officer (“The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” 1966), a struggling Puerto Rican widower (“Popi,” 1969) and a mild-mannered Manhattan dentist recruited into an unlikely espionage scheme by his daughter’s future father-in-law (“The In-Laws,” 1979). Arkin died on June 29 at 89. Over his seven decade career, he was nominated four times for an Academy Award, and won in 2007 for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine,” as the vulgar grandfather of a little girl who dreams of winning a beauty pageant.
Louise Levy
‘Supercentenarian’ subject of longevity study among Ashkenazi Jews
Louise Levy was born in 1910 and grew up in Cleveland and New York City; Levy often ascribed her longevity to a daily glass of red wine and a low-cholesterol diet. (Photos courtesy Levy family, via Fox Funeral Home)
Born on Nov. 1, 1910 in Cleveland, Louise Levy joined a small group of supercentenarians — people older than 110, of which there are fewer than two dozen in the world — when she turned 110 in 2020. She was a participant in The Longevity Genes Project, a study of long-living Ashkenazi Jews that aims to explore what genetic factors might allow people to live well into the triple digits. Levy, meanwhile, credited her long life to a daily glass of red wine and a low-cholesterol diet, and she said she never ate sweets. Levy died on July 17 at age 112. Before her death, she was the oldest living resident of New York State.
Nechama Tec
Survivor whose book about the Bielski partisans inspired the Daniel Craig film ‘Defiance’
University of Connecticut sociologist and historian Nechama Tec’s 1993 book “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” was adapted for a 2008 film directed by Edward Zwick. (Jewish Women’s Archive)
Born in Lublin, Poland in 1931, Nechama Tec survived the Shoah by posing as the niece of a Catholic family. She eventually immigrated to New York via Israel, where she earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. For decades, she was on the sociology faculty at the University of Connecticut, writing mainly about overlooked aspects of the Holocaust, including the role of Christian rescuers and the gender dynamics among and between Jewish survivors. Her 1993 book, “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans,” about a group of Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis, was made into the 2008 film “Defiance.” Tec died in New York City on Aug. 3 at age 92.
Cantor Philip Sherman
The ‘busiest mohel in New York’
Cantor Philip Sherman was a prominent mohel in the New York City area. (Courtesy Philip Sherman)
Wearing a signature bowtie to each of his appointments, Cantor Philip Sherman performed more than 26,000 circumcisions during his 45-year career, including for the offspring of many Jewish celebrities. His record, he told JTA in 2014, was 11 in one day. Sherman died of pancreatic cancer at 67 on Aug. 9 in New York City. His family remembers him as optimistic, determined and passionate about the Jewish community. “He would run in, run out because it was important to him to cover as many brisses as he could,” said his son Elan Sherman, who was with him on the record-setting day. “He wanted to leave that mark on the Jewish community, that he was really there as much as he could be for all Jewish babies.” Born in Syracuse, Sherman graduated with a joint degree from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1979, and served as a cantor at several Manhattan synagogues including Park East Synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue and Congregation Shearith Israel-The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.
Rabbi Israel Francus, Rabbi Avraham Holtz, Samuel Klagsbrun
Revered scholars of Conservative Judaism professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary
Samuel Klagsbrun, Israel Francus and Avraham Holtz were on the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary. (Via JTS)
The Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship rabbinical institution of the Conservative movement, was in deep mourning in November after three scholars died within days of each other. Rabbi Israel Francus and Rabbi Avraham Holtz both died on Nov. 15 at ages 96 and 89, respectively. Both were professors at the seminary; Francus taught Talmudic exegesis and Holtz was an authority on the Nobel Prize-winning Israeli author S.Y. Agnon, as well as the chair of the department of Hebrew Literature and dean of Academic Development. Samuel Klagsbrun was a psychiatrist who for many years taught pastoral psychiatry to JTS students and founded the school’s Center for Pastoral Education in 2009. He died on Nov. 11 at 91. “Together, these three individuals reflect the breadth and depth of a JTS education,” Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of JTS, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She noted that the three represented “the importance JTS attaches to educating not only the texts, history, and ideas of our people but also ensuring that future clergy were attuned to the heart, soul, and emotional lives of the Jews they would serve.”
Neil Drossman
Ad writer admired for his wit and wordplay
Neil Drossman created a series of ads for Teacher’s scotch featuring ghost-written testimonials by celebrities, including Groucho Marx, left. (Photo courtesy of Robert Danor)
Those familiar with the memorable ad campaigns of Meow Mix — “The Cat Food Cats Ask For By Name” — and Emery Air Freight, which featured a photo of globe-trotting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with the headline, “Emery flies to more places than he does,” are familiar with the work of Brooklyn-born Neil Drossman. He wrote some of most admired tag lines and campaigns in the history of the advertising business at the tail end of the “Mad Men” era. “Seeing his work transformed my views of what advertising could be,” the advertising executive Lee Garfinkel wrote in a tribute in the trade journal Ad Age. “Each headline was smart, funny, insightful, unexpected and thought-provoking.” Drossman died on Nov. 25 at age 83.
Rabbi Laurie Phillips
Founder of a Manhattan ‘synagogue without walls’
Rabbi Laurie Phillips founded the New York-based “synagogue without walls” Beinenu. (Courtesy Debbie Mukamal and Rabbi John Franken)
Rabbi Laurie Phillips founded “Beinenu” (“between us” in Hebrew) in 2014 as a means of offering Jewish worship and celebrations in intimate spaces. She co-directed the organization with musician Daphna Mor, and also led High Holiday services at JCC Harlem. Before launching Beinenu, Phillips served as the associate director for the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at the JCC Association of North America, where she co-created Lechu Lachem, an immersive program for Jewish camp directors. She also helped create, with the JCC Manhattan and three nearby synagogues, the Jewish Journeys project, which provides personalized alternatives to synagogue-based supplementary Jewish schooling. Phillips died on Nov. 26 at age 55. “I am so lucky to have found a partner with whom I could create my dream version of a Jewish community in NYC, led through the heart, held by music, genuine love, and joy,” Mor said in a statement to JTA. “Laurie’s legacy of light, love and kindness keeps shining through all the people whose lives she touched.”
Rabbi David Ellenson
A prominent scholar, a leader of the Reform movement and ‘everyone’s favorite rabbi’
Rabbi David Ellenson served for 12 years as president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. (Courtesy of HUC)
As the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi David Ellenson mentored a generation of rabbis and scholars as a historian, adviser and confidant. He prioritized a year of study in Israel for rabbinical students, shepherded the institution through the 2008 financial crisis, expanded the number of women in leadership roles and led efforts to ease the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate’s grip on religious ritual in Israel. A prolific scholar of modern Jewish thought and history, Ellenson died on Dec. 7 at his home in Manhattan at age 76. Before his 12-year-long tenure as president, which ended in 2013, Ellenson spent some 30 years as a student and faculty member at HUC-JIR. “My soul is bound to this institution and to the holy mission that animates it,” he wrote in 2013. “It has been the greatest privilege to devote my life to this school.”
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The post Lives Lived: Notable New Yorkers who died in 2023 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Mike Huckabee Presents Credentials to Israel’s President, Begins Duties as US Ambassador
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee on Monday presented his credentials to Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, officially beginning his time as the Trump administration’s chief diplomatic representative in Israel.
Huckabee, a Baptist minister and the former governor of Arkansas, described the opportunity to become the official US ambassador to Israel as “an honor and incredible joy.”
“Over 50 years ago I came to Israel for the first time,” he said. “I was amazed to be standing in the land of the Bible. Now I come back as an old man, but with a sense of joy and awe that I am in the land that God said, ‘This is mine and these are my people.’ I came here because I believe that this not just geopolitical, because I also love to see it through the eyes of people who come here for the first time.”
During his remarks at the Israeli presidential residence, Huckabee warned that Iran seeks to destroy not only Israel but also the United States.
“It has always been their desire that Israel would be the opening act and then it would be America’s turn to face destruction,” Huckabee said. “Or, to put it another simple way, Israel is the appetizer, and the United States is the entrée.”
Huckabee’s comments came on the heels of the Trump administration’s second round of discussions with Iran over the weekend regarding the regime’s nuclear program. The Trump administration has stated that it aims to dismantle the Iranian program, sharing the view of other Western states that Iran seeks to build nuclear weapons. Tehran claims its nuclear activities are only for civilian energy use.
Huckabee lauded his new position as “divine” and vowed “to stand with the people of Israel for peace and prosperity.”
Herzog showered praise on Huckabee, calling the American official “a shining reflection of [US President Donald Trump’s] love, friendship, and support for the State of Israel.”
The newly minted ambassador arrived in Israel last week, visiting the Western Wall on Friday. Huckabee placed his hand on the holy Jewish site, lowered his head in prayer, and then inserted a slip of paper containing a prayer into the wall.
Huckabee said the prayer, which was delivered on behalf of Trump, read, “For peace in Israel.”
“What an honor it is for me to come on behalf of the president of the United States, President Donald Trump, and to present a prayer that he handwrote, gave to me last Thursday at the White House, with the instruction that my first act as ambassador would be to take his prayer — praying for the peace of Jerusalem — and to bring it to the wall, and to pray that there would in fact be, peace in the land,” Huckabee said.
The US Senate earlier this month voted to confirm Huckabee as the new ambassador to Israel, placing a strong pro-Israel conservative in the prominent position.
The Senate voted 53 to 46 in favor of Huckabee, with all Democrats except Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman voting against him. Every Republican voted to confirm Huckabee.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has long been a stalwart ally of the Jewish state. He has repudiated the anti-Israel protests that erupted in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and criticized former US President Joe Biden for sympathizing with anti-Israel protesters during his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). The incoming ambassador also lambasted the anti-Israel encampments at elite universities, stating that there should be “outrage” over the targeting and mistreatment of Jewish college students.
Huckabee has defended Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank, acknowledging the Jewish people’s ties to the land dating back to the ancient world. He has also vowed to refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” adopting terminology preferred by Israel.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, referring to the biblical names for the area. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
During Huckabee’s 2008 US presidential campaign, he stated that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” and that land for a potential Palestinian state should be taken from other Arab states and not Israel.
The post Mike Huckabee Presents Credentials to Israel’s President, Begins Duties as US Ambassador first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Looks to Cut Another $1 Billion in Funding From Harvard University as School Builds War Chest
US President Donald Trump attends the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, April 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
The Trump administration may confiscate another $1 billion in federal funds previously appropriated to Harvard University over its allegedly breaching the confidentiality of negotiations on quelling campus antisemitism and reducing the institution’s left-wing bias, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The move would intensify what has become a fight over the future of elite higher education, against which conservatives have lodged a slew of criticisms for decades. Their moment to take action has now arrived with the second term of US President Donald Trump, which coincides with a precipitous drop in public support for academia caused by an explosion of pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses and the promotion of views which many Americans perceive as anti-meritocratic, anti-Western, and racist.
Earlier this month, the administration impounded $2.26 billion in Harvard’s federal funds over the institution’s refusal to agree to a wishlist of policy reforms that Republican lawmakers have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Contained in a letter the administration sent to Harvard interim president Alan Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — the policies called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
More cuts may be forthcoming, the Journal reported, due to the Trump administration’s fury over Garber’s decision to publicize the letter, which was intended to be a private discussion between it and Harvard. Administration officials were reportedly planning to treat the university “more leniently” than other schools from which it has already confiscated billions before the policy list was released.
Harvard, however, has denied that it ever agreed to keep its correspondence with the multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism confidential. Meanwhile, the Trump administration believes “the school aimed to fight the entire time” and that it must now respond with more punitive measures to demonstrate its resolve to see a conflict with Harvard through to the end.
The administration is already taking action against the school in other ways. On Friday, the Department of Education announced that it is investigating Harvard’s foreign contributors, citing as cause the university’s alleged numerous failures to provide annual disclosures of gifts exceeding $250,000 as is required by the Higher Education Act of 1965.
“As a recipient of federal funding, Harvard University must be transparent about its relations with foreign sources and governments. Unfortunately, our review indicated that Harvard has not been fully transparent or complete in its disclosures, which is both unacceptable and unlawful,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “This records request is the Trump administration’s first step to ensure that Harvard is not being manipulated by, or doing the bidding of, foreign entities, which includes actors who are hostile to the interests of the United States and American studies.”
She added, “We hope Harvard will respect its own motto and be truthful in its federal filings and foreign relationships.”
Harvard University has been cheered by progressives and criticized by conservatives over its refusal to enact the reforms proposed by the Trump administration.
Former US President Barack Obama lauded Garber for “rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom,” and former Harvard president Larry Summers, speaking to The Harvard Crimson, said that the school should spend down its $53.2 billion endowment fund to offset the federal government’s cuts.
Others, however, such as pro-Israel activist Shabbos Kestenbaum, expressed more opprobrious views of Harvard, accusing it of “fighting Trump harder than it ever fought antisemitism.” Christopher Rufo, a conservative author and resident scholar of the Manhattan Institute, said Trump “has every right to withhold funding” due to the university’s embrace of the DEI movement and holding of segregated graduation ceremonies.
Harvard’s so-called “resistance” is backed by its immense wealth, and the school has been drawing on its vast financial resources to build a war chest for withstanding Trump’s budget cuts since March, when it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Another $750 million in bonds was offered to investors in April, according to The Harvard Crimson, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
A generous subsidy protects Harvard from paying exorbitant interest on the new debt, as investors can sell most bonds issued by educational institutions without being required to pay federal income tax. Other universities have resorted to borrowing as well, issuing what was reportedly a record $12.4 billion municipal bonds, some of which are taxable, during the first quarter of 2025. Among those which chose to take on debt are Northwestern University, which was defunded to the tune of $790 million on April 8. It issued $500 million in bonds in March. Princeton University, recently dispossessed of $210 in federal grants, is preparing an offering of $320 million, according to Forbes.
The strategy cannot be maintained indefinitely, Middle East expert and president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East Asaf Romirowsky told The Algemeiner on Monday, noting that Harvard’s first bond offering fell short of its target by $15 million. He said that it is best, and cheaper, for Harvard, as well as other Ivy League institutions, to address the campus antisemitism crisis and “wokeness” on terms to which they and Trump can agree.
“Harvard and other elite colleges seem to feel that Trump is out to hurt them, but the fact of the matter is that they have refused to be introspective in assessing the quality of the product they produce,” Romirowsky explained. “It behooves everybody to find some kind of middle of the road if we are going to change and reform the institutions and give them time to clean themselves up.”
He continued, “Will Harvard survive? Of course, but it needs to reckon with the quality and caliber of its students and faculty, who are so ideologically disconnected from reality.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Looks to Cut Another $1 Billion in Funding From Harvard University as School Builds War Chest first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran’s Top Diplomat to Visit China as Tehran Seeks to Strengthen Ties Amid US Tensions
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Photo: Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will visit China on Tuesday, ahead of a third round of nuclear talks with the United States in Oman this weekend, as both Tehran and Beijing seek to deepen their bilateral ties.
“It is natural that we will consult and brief China over the latest developments in Iran-US indirect talks,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday, adding that Araghchi’s trip also aims to further the implementation of agreements between Tehran and Beijing as their relations grow stronger.
According to Jack Burnham, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, both countries recognize the increasing value of their cooperation on the global stage.
“The growing ties between China and Iran signal a rising ‘Axis of Aggressors’ coordinating their efforts to undermine US and Israeli national security,” Burnham told The Algemeiner.
“Iran remains a key supplier of cheap crude for Chinese refineries, while Chinese firms with close ties to the Chinese military have been accused of offering support to the Houthis [an Iran-backed terrorist group based in Yemen] in their strikes against US and Israeli targets,” he continued.
Iran’s growing ties with China come at a time when both countries are facing escalating sanctions from Washington, particularly targeting Tehran’s oil industry, as part of US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at cutting the country’s crude exports to zero and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“As the Trump administration seeks to increase pressure on Tehran to gain leverage in ongoing nuclear talks, China’s support for Iran may become a more significant aspect of the regime’s willingness to hold out — a key factor behind the US Treasury Department’s efforts to sanction Chinese refineries as negotiations continue,” Burnham told The Algemeiner.
In an interview with the Russian state news agency RT, Araghchi said that close collaboration with Moscow and Beijing is “a necessity” for Tehran, given the current international climate.
“We have started trilateral talks with Russia and China on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program for some time now,” the Iranian top diplomat said. “We are ready to continue these talks and expand them to other issues.”
“Iran, China, and Russia – in a coordinated move – can take effective steps towards international peace,” he continued.
Tehran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian security and political group, in 2023 and also joined the BRICS group in 2024 — a bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that positions itself as an alternative to economic institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
In 2021, Iran and China signed a comprehensive 25-year strategic agreement covering energy, security, infrastructure, and communications, which ceded almost all of Tehran’s natural and mineral resources, infrastructure, and markets to Beijing in exchange for security guarantees against the West.
The latest example of their growing military cooperation was their joint naval drills earlier this year, called the Maritime Security Belt 2025, in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, located in the northern Indian Ocean.
As part of Tuesday’s visit to Beijing, a high-ranking judicial delegation will join Iran’s top diplomat to the Chinese capital.
Iranian Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei will attend the 20th summit of the chairs of supreme courts from the nine member countries of the SCO. The conference will focus on strengthening legal cooperation to combat terrorism, organized crime, trafficking, and cybercrime.
The high-level trip comes ahead of a third round of nuclear talks with Washington in Oman this Saturday, following Tehran’s previous consultations with Russia.
After Saturday’s second round of nuclear negotiations in Rome, Araghchi announced that an expert-level track would begin in the coming days to finalize the details of a potential agreement.
“Relatively positive atmosphere in Rome has enabled progress on principles and objectives of a possible deal,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
“We made clear how many in Iran believe that the JCPOA [a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief] is no longer good enough for us. To them, what is left from that deal are ‘lessons learned,’” he continued.
“For now, optimism may be warranted but only with a great deal of caution.”
Iran has previously rejected halting its uranium enrichment program, insisting that the country’s right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable, despite Washington’s threats of military actions, additional sanctions, and tariffs if an agreement is not reached to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities.
Last week, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that any deal with Iran must require the complete dismantling of its “nuclear enrichment and weaponization program” — reversing his earlier comments, in which he indicated that the White House would allow Tehran to enrich uranium to a 3.67 percent threshold for a “civil nuclear program.”
The post Iran’s Top Diplomat to Visit China as Tehran Seeks to Strengthen Ties Amid US Tensions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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