Under siege over Israel, Hamas and antisemitism, US colleges look to PR giants for help

Some of the nation’s top universities are scrambling to hire heavyweight communications firms as their campuses become consumed by cultural and political proxy fights stemming from the Israel-Hamas war.

Among the schools that have turned to firms for help in recent months: New York University, Harvard University, Columbia University, The Cooper Union and the University of California. Those academic institutions sought help from trained PR or communications professionals in navigating student protests, unrest from donors or government inquiries borne from how the schools have handled the conflict in the Middle East, according to six people familiar with the arrangements. The decision to do so underscores just how delicate the campus debates have become in recent weeks. Already, two major university presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, have resigned from their posts under immense political pressure following their testimony before Congress, in which they offered lawyerly responses to how they’d treat calls for the genocide of Jews. Their performance, it should be noted, had the help of high-powered outside advisors — an indication that consultants don’t always solve problems but sometimes do create them.

Still, academic leaders have struggled to find the right response to campus protests over Israel’s military campaign and concerns among other parts of the student body about rising antisemitism. Media attention and political scrutiny have amplified, with House Republicans launching an investigation into how universities are handling antisemitism.

While much of the pressure being applied to universities is coming from conservatives, the schools themselves have turned to Democratic-allied firms for help.

New York University, where in October the law school’s student bar association president quickly blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, enlisted veteran Democratic consulting firm SKDK — whose clients have included President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — to help with the university’s internal and external responses around the war and related issues.

The work included advice around issues with donors, students and government officials’ inquiries around antisemitism, according to a person close to SKDK who requested anonymity to discuss the firm’s work. The firm declined to comment. The university’s official work with SKDK began around December, when three of its peer universities appeared before the House Education and the Workforce Committee for a hearing on antisemitism.

The Cooper Union, the New York City school where Jewish students huddled in a library during a pro-Palestinian protest in October, also brought in SKDK to help it navigate fallout from that incident. The firm helped the college respond to a media inquiry from The Messenger.

Harvard University has turned to another Democratic firm, Precision, to help it handle fallout from turmoil over pro-Palestinian protests on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The school was engulfed in controversy for weeks over its response to campus groups that said they held Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

The firm, which had a pre-existing relationship with the school, provided communications support after Oct. 7 to help with the crisis on campus, two people familiar with the arrangement said. The school also has turned to PR behemoth Edelman and the firms of former Chuck Schumer aides Risa Heller and Alex Levy.

Columbia University has leaned on the consulting giant FGS Global, with which it has had a working relationship going back several years, according to a Columbia spokesperson. As part of the contract, the firm has helped out with communications support in dealing with issues affecting the university since Oct. 7. Columbia suspended pro-Palestinian groups in November for events that violated university policies, including one that “‘proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation,’” according to an email cited by the school’s student newspaper the Columbia Daily Spectator.

The University of California reached out to a firm run by a prominent Democratic operative for counsel on its own handling of the unfolding cultural battles, according to the Democratic operative who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. But that person’s firm does not currently work for the school, and a university spokesperson said it was “not aware of any external entities being engaged” through the president’s office.

A number of these firms brought into the fold have close ties to the Biden administration. SKDK co-founder Anita Dunn is now senior adviser to the president. Precision was founded by Obama and Biden world operatives.

Ken Spain, a Republican partner of the firm Narrative Strategies, said the decision to turn to Democratic-allied firms illustrated how insular the universities are.

“Ironically, and unsurprisingly, the challenge these universities are facing is their lack of political diversity when it comes to seeking outside advisement,” he said. “A crisis of this magnitude requires a holistic strategy, and right now they seem to be several steps behind each news cycle, and that’s largely because they are stuck in their own echo chamber.”

That perspective was echoed by a longtime Republican lobbyist who works on education policy who said the challenges elite universities are having in Washington in recent months are precisely because they aren’t exposed to alternative political viewpoints.

“Nobody ever talks to Republicans. They don’t even know how to have a conversation with them,” the lobbyist said. “They talk to themselves a lot but not as much to the outside world.”

Harvard, FGS Global, Precision and Levy declined to comment. NYU and The Cooper Union did not respond to requests for comment.

Stacy Kerr, a partner at the public affairs firm Penta Group and former Nancy Pelosi aide, said universities are scrambling for professional communications help because they are dealing with new outside forces. Kerr, who served as chief communications officer at Georgetown University, said schools had approached her, looking for help in the wake of Oct. 7. Her firm works with some universities, and she has also been consulting with university leaders, but she declined to say who.

Historically, higher education has not relied heavily on public affairs support, beyond lobbying for government funding, she said. But Kerr added that universities were the next battleground in a larger culture war, and schools were now trying to catch up.

“In an industry that has not historically hired and relied on a lot of outside perspective, you’re now seeing a race and a scramble to gain outside perspective because there’s new groups of stakeholders now pressuring and threatening the sustainability of these university presidents’ jobs or in some cases, the reputation of the university,” she said.

The use of outside PR help comes as elite higher education brace for a continued onslaught of scrutiny in the coming months. The House is set to vote on a bipartisan deal in the coming weeks that would direct federal funding away from wealthy universities toward short-term job training programs. And there is growing bipartisan interest in imposing new restrictions on colleges’ foreign sources of revenue.

In addition, House GOP leaders are gearing up to use their gavels to scrutinize higher education. The House education committee announced plans to investigate colleges for their handling of antisemitism after lawmakers already held several hearings last year.

Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary who now runs his own PR firm, said that universities won’t solve their PR issues with conservatives by hiring firms that don’t know how to talk to right-leaning Americans.

“The problem is if the perception is these universities are out of touch because they have become left-wing citadels and fortifications, hiring left-wing PR firms to build a better fortification is the last thing that they need to do,” he said.

“The fundamental problem is that these major universities would rather make it through the night, rather than solve their long-term problems,” Fleischer added. “They want to paper over their immediate problems, hope that the temperature of the water drops below boiling and then go back to what they were always doing.”