BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Monday that he was "outraged" and "horrified by the images" out of Israel following Hamas’ terror attack last week.
In an interview on FOX Business Network’s "The Claman Countdown" with host Liz Claman and Charlie Gasparino, Fink said that "the world needs to get back its moral compass" and said that he is "standing up against bigotry and hatred." He also said that he "totally agreed" that there is no moral equivalence between what is happening in the Middle East broadly versus what happened to Israel on Oct. 7, when at least 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas in a surprise terror attack.
Fink was asked about his thoughts on business leaders criticizing the response on college campuses to Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel, including Bill Ackman, CEO and billionaire founder of Pershing Square Capital Management.
Last week, Ackman called for Harvard to publish the names of students who are members of groups that signed on to a letter from the Palestine Solidarity Committee that stated Israel was "entirely responsible" for Hamas’ terror attack against it and offered no condemnation of Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians so that he and other CEOs could avoid hiring those students inadvertently.
He later said in response to students saying they were not aware of the letter or their respective group’s role in its drafting and publication that students in such groups should either resign, work to revise the statement or accept the consequences of the world believing they stood by its sentiment.
Fink noted that BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has a longstanding practice of vetting prospective employees through background checks that consider their past public statements.
Fink added that in his role as a member of the New York University board of trustees, the board and university leadership categorically condemned the attack.
"As a board member at NYU, we were loud and specific and immediate in terms of stopping any of that support of hatred," Fink said.
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NYU also experienced a campus controversy in the wake of Hamas’ attacks. NYU Law School Student Bar Association president Ryna Workman wrote a letter stating that "Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life" and went on to condemn Israel and the U.S. without criticizing Hamas.
"This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary," Workman wrote.
NYU, which initially issued a statement condemning the attack on Israel on Oct. 8, released a statement to make clear that Workman’s views do not represent the university and emphasized its condemnation of Hamas’ terrorism.
"The statement issued by the Student Bar Association does not in any way reflect the point of view of NYU. Acts of terrorism are immoral. The indiscriminate killing of civilians and hostage-taking, including children and the elderly, is reprehensible. Blaming victims of terrorism for their own deaths is wrong," NYU spokesperson John Beckman wrote.
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The NYU Law Student Bar Association started the process of removing Workman as the group’s president. Additionally, Workman’s post-graduation job offer was rescinded by Winston & Strawn LLP after the firm found out about it.
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NYU’s leadership, including NYU president Linda Mills and the board of trustees that Fink is a member of, updated their initial condemnation of the attacks on Israel to reemphasize their categorical condemnation of Hamas’ terrorism in the wake of the Workman controversy.
FOX Business’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
