Jumping into the controversy around the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, the software company
Palantir
Technologies is offering to “immediately” hire 180 students who feel unsafe in the current environment.
In an interview with Barron’s, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said he decided to launch the program following a Congressional hearing Wednesday in which the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were questioned about the increase in hostility to Jewish students at the three schools.
“I keep hearing stories of Jewish students who are terrified to go to class,” Karp said. “We thought we could be impactful by acting first and getting others to take note of it. We’ve crossed a threshold here.”
Karp said that the situation has reached a point where “we can’t rely on the leaders of elite educational institutions” to defend Jewish students. “I had to watch their performance twice to believe it was real,” he said of the Congressional hearing. “Their response is unfathomable.”
At one point in Wednesday’s hearing, the three university presidents were asked whether calling for genocide against Jewish people would violate their schools’ code of conduct; all three essentially said that it would depend whether that speech turned into conduct. Their responses drew condemnation from elected officials, Jewish groups and others. Penn President Liz Magill posted a video message after the hearing to clarify her position.
The presidents of both Harvard and Penn released statements after the hearing to clarify their positions. “In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.”
Palantir has been outspoken in its support for Israel, at one point running a full-page advertisement in the New York Times that read “Palantir Stands with Israel.” Karp discussed the issued at length on the company’s most recent earnings call, noting that the company has made all of its products available to the Israel Defense Forces. Among other things, the company makes “battlefield management” software.
Palantir announced the new jobs program in a post on LinkedIn.
“Students on campuses are terrified and have been instructed by administrators to hide their Judaism,” Palantir said. “We are launching an initiative for students who because of anti-Semitism fear for their safety on campus and need to seek refuge outside traditional establishments of higher education. They are welcome to join Palantir, and we are setting aside 180 positions for them immediately.”
Write to Eric J. Savitz at [email protected]
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