Many of President Donald Trump's critics are applauding Harvard University for standing up to him, but Harvard is doing so at a cost. Trump is threatening to pull funding from Harvard and taken away their tax-exempt status.
Political differences are often cited as a key reason for Trump's disdain for Harvard, which he considers a bastion of left-wing thought. But the Daily Beast's Michael Daly, in an article published on April 17, cites another reason: an intense feud with the family of Penny Pritzker, the most senior member of Harvard's board of governors.
"Pritzker is also widely viewed as the dominant member of the ultra-wealthy Pritzker family that was Donald Trump’s partner in his first big real estate deal in Manhattan back in 1975," Daly explains. "She has not made a comment about Harvard’s decision to stand up to the Trump Administration, and the university did not reply when the Daily Beast asked about her role. But she must know from her family's experience decades ago what it can ultimately mean to make a deal with Trump."
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Now 78, Trump was only 29 when the Pritzkers, according to Daly, "entered into a partnership with him."
"After an initial financial success," Daly notes, "the partnership devolved into a prolonged, acrimonious dispute between Trump and Hyatt [Hotels], which was then headed by Jay Pritzker, Penny's uncle ... Trump complained that Hyatt had actually asked him to pay his due share in upgrading the hotel at a time when his dependence on junk bonds and outsized sense of his own brilliance in other projects had left him at the brink of ruin."
Daly adds, "He narrowly escaped and revealed a taste for revenge that has become familiar to many of us in recent days."
Trump filed a lawsuit against the Pritzkers in 1993, claiming they were running "a racketeering enterprise."
Daly quotes Trump as saying of the Pritzker family, "They attacked me when I was down. Now, I'm doing great again, and it’s my turn. I always said, the first time I got back on my feet, the Pritzkers would be the first people I'd go after."
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Read the full Daily Beast article at this link (subscription required).