The Greenberg Brief: Charitable Donations – Events Signal Reconsideration

Each year end, charitable contributions are made to museums, places of worship, educational, emergency and humanitarian organizations and so much more. Larger than just a tax deduction, we donate to support a cause any time of the year, especially when a disaster occurs.

People often arrange annual financial gift giving as part of their estate planning, a set amount each year as a distribution of their assets upon death. Many family trusts and foundations make sizable contributions to hospitals, research instructions, perhaps their college alma mater. I’ve personally made my list where I want my charitable donations to go as well.

As many of you know, I had undergone treatment during most of 2020 under the care of UCSF here in San Francisco; for nearly a year, my “second home” was the UCSF cancer center’s Mission Bay campus. I’m glad to report that 3 years out, all’s clear. I’ve been a huge cheerleader for UCSF’s world-class research and cutting-edge clinical trials. As a patient, they have literally saved my life. I’ve made modest annual donations to them over the last couple of years and planned to leave them a more significant amount as part of my estate planning.

But then came the horrific Hamas attack on Israel, October 7th. The world has changed. The line of pro and anti-Israel sentiment and activism is well defined; few people appear to be on the fence. Seeing protests erupt on school campuses, many blocking bridges and tunnels, taking over government halls and demanding cease-fire resolutions, activism have swept the nation in rabid hysteria. Your friends, your family members, your co-workers, employees, business colleagues, teachers, students, virtually everyone has taken an extreme position on the Israel/Hamas war. Politicians have as well.

But now we’ve learned of Dr. Rupa Marya, an Internal Medicine doctor and professor at UCSF. She’s made national headlines for her hysterical screed over Israel, Zionism and how the United States’ healthcare system is not only infiltrated and compromised by Jews and Zionists, but she’s even embraced, very vocally, a conspiracy theory that Zionists in medicine need to be investigated. She’s very active on social media, bleating racist and antisemitic, anti-Zionist tropes. If she had the power, a la Inquisition, she’d turn the screws on the Jews.

Condemnation of her stance was swift, to the point that just Saturday, January 6th, 2024, UCSF had to post their reaction to the controversy, a statement of their rejection of conspiracy theories, their rejection of bias, prejudice and racism at their campus.

Elsewhere, a hearing was called at one of San Francisco city hall, with a Board of Supervisors’ subcommittee (a three-person Rules Committee) to consider a resolution urging a permanent Israeli cease-fire. As if the full eleven-member Board of Supervisors has nothing better to do and has to drop everything to play armchair State Department. As if the City of San Francisco has oodles of money to spend on hours and hours of document preparation and review, on elected officials’ time, on building security costs, and then invite the pubic to line up in chambers to weigh in with public comments for and against the Cease-Fire resolution.

Dean Preston (San Francisco’s notorious “Socialist” Supervisor ) was the city hall official who crafted and submitted the Cease-Fire resolution for consideration, a month ago. The initial hearing before a subcommittee took place today.

Showing up to speak, along with a five hour-long conga-line of public commenters, was Dr. Rupa Marya.

Apparently, Dr. Marya has quite a lot of time on her hands to take nearly an entire Monday work day off from UCSF to bring her hate speech to city hall chambers and bash Israel, the subcommittee, to cry “racism” every other word and to blame  Zionists for the worlds’ problems. Here’s a clip from her rant.

Now the dilemma: Dr. Marya is an employee at UCSF, and she’s not alone in her off-the-charts racist, antisemitic meanderings. She’s a doctor of internal medicine, a professor, and she lectures and influences many. She’s written some pretty screw-loose papers as well. A blemish on the UCSF staff, she’s putting in jeopardy the willingness of we charitable donors to support UCSF hospital.

You may have recently heard about Bill Ackman, a billionaire who’s taken a hard line over antisemitism at his alma mater, Harvard. He’s cut off his charitable donations. Similarly, here in San Francisco, Jonathan Wornick, who’s family makes seven-figure annual funding donations to the California College of the Arts, also discovered a mass antisemitism problem. As a result, Wornick is threatening to end his family’s bequest.

I am beside myself. UCSF is in a bad position, yet to me, solutions are clear. I am strongly considering an adjustment to where my charitable donations go, for both the near future and as part of estate planning as well. Never had I expected a hospital which had saved my life by clearing my body of cancerous cells, also employs rabid antisemites demanding clearing the nation’s healthcare system of Israel supporters.