CEO defends sharing list of Harvard students who signed pro-Palestine letter: They must ‘pay the price’
After his LinkedIn account was allegedly suspended for criticizing pro-Palestine Harvard students, EasyHealth CEO David Duel explained why this conflict is personal to him, and doubled down on Bill Ackman’s calls not to hire those Ivy League candidates.
"I'm not surprised my account was taken down for sharing a list of students who were advocating for the death and destruction of the Jewish people," Duel said on "Cavuto: Live" Saturday. "We're not talking about arguments over a two-state solution or political divisions of land. We're talking about Hamas. We're talking about terrorism, whose own charter calls for the extermination of the Jews."
"I think the hypocrisy and lack of moral clarity on campuses and with administration is conscious or subconscious antisemitism," he expanded. "And we need to make sure these students pay a price and that their neighbors, friends and employers know that they harbor these beliefs."
LinkedIn did not respond to FOX News Digital's request for comment.
Duel was one of many U.S.-based CEOs to back billionaire hedge fund manager Ackman’s argument to release the names of students who signed a Harvard letter blaming Hamas’ terror attacks solely on Israel.
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"I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure [ensure] that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members," Ackman wrote last Tuesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Following the controversy created by the letter, the groups that signed on to the version circulated on Sunday removed the names of their groups from the letter.
A version of the letter published on Google Docs said, "This statement was co-authored by a coalition of Palestine solidarity groups at Harvard. For student safety, the names of all original signing organizations have been concealed at this time."
Duel shared context Saturday on why it’s important to release the students’ names.
"My family fled their homeland of Iran for over 2,000 years due to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The Persian-Jewish community had to flee overnight, a once unimaginable situation," the CEO explained. "And as a result of my family's experience, I don't take my freedoms and securities for granted."
"Our campuses are supposedly bastions of free speech, but are truly domains of preferred speech at best," he continued. "I think you and I know very well that in the wake of George Floyd, if white nationalists decided to hold a rally at UCLA or Harvard, it would never be allowed. Yet these same elite institutions are allowing and often encouraging calls of protests for the slaughter and genocide of the Jewish people."
Noting these are "the same people" who have vocally demanded safe spaces from other cultural issues like misgendering, Duel also argued that the students shouldn’t forever "be judged by the worst decision they made in their life."
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"I've made a lot of stupid decisions in my life, but I think they have an opportunity to publicly renounce their support for terrorism and Jew hatred," Duel said. "At the end of the 20th century, 40% of university faculty and students in Vienna were Jews. That number went to zero and they got killed in the Holocaust. I'm going to do my part to prevent this from happening again."
"I felt the need to speak up, knowing full well that this would come at a financial and personal price," the CEO added. "I've already received multiple threats, bombarded with hate messages, but history has shown that the price of inaction could be greater."
FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.