Haverford College students have publicly advocated for the school to consider removing U.S. Commerce Secretary and mega donor Howard Lutnick’s name from the library.
Behind the scenes, an older group has been pushing, too.
About a dozen vocal Haverford alumni have come out in strident disagreement with president Wendy Raymond’s decision in April not to take steps toward considering the removal of Lutnick’s name.
Several in the group have called for Raymond’s resignation, while at least one said he had withheld his donation. Some were critical of Lutnick even before Department of Justice documents released earlier this year showed he had contact with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as recently as 2018, long after Epstein pleaded guilty to obtaining a minor for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.
But Raymond stood by and explained her decision during a Zoom call last week with former board members, and the current board chair said Lutnick himself feels that he is being targeted in a witch hunt, according to accounts of the meeting.
Among the concerned alumni is Norm Pearlstine, a 1963 graduate who served on Haverford’s board of managers from 1986 to 1989 and is a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and Time Inc. and former chief content officer at Bloomberg.
“I am appalled,” Pearlstine wrote to Raymond on May 3, days after she announced she would not initiate a committee to consider removing Lutnick’s name from the library. “You should resign immediately so Haverford‘s board can replace you with a leader who puts principle ahead of principal.”
Another alumnus wrote that he would not advise his grandchildren to attend Haverford.
“I cannot imagine that my granddaughters or grandsons would want to enter the Lutnick library or the Lutnick cafe or for that matter, any other building on campus with his name on it,” wrote Joseph Schulze, a 1963 graduate and retired Michigan school superintendent who grew up in the Philadelphia area.
Adi Ignatius, a 1981 graduate and journalist who is editor at large of the Harvard Business Review, said he donated to Haverford every year until 2025, when he withheld his money because of the Lutnick matter.
Haverford in a statement said many community members who oppose removing Lutnick’s name have also written to the college or told Raymond they are against the creation of a review committee that was requested through a student resolution this spring.
“President Raymond felt it was in the best interest of the college to reject the resolution because she did not believe this matter met the threshold necessary to constitute a committee given the college’s established standards and the information available to us at that moment,” the statement said.
But, the college said, “the matter is not closed.” Haverford is continuing to monitor “publicly available information” and “community sentiment” on the issue and Raymond or her successor could choose to initiate a committee, the college said.
Haverford not ready to make an ‘indictment’
Raymond, in the June 11 Zoom call with former board members, said she regarded creating a committee close to an “indictment” and did not think the threshold had been met, according to an email account of the meeting by Pearlstine obtained by The Inquirer. Some concerns about Lutnick are political, she said, and she is not willing to consider politics in her decision-making about a renaming committee, according to accounts of the meeting.
Students and alumni have pointed out that Lutnick had previously said he had not been in a room with Epstein, whom he found “disgusting,” since 2005, yet he testified to Congress earlier this year that he had visited Epstein’s private island with his family in 2012 and exchanged emails with him in 2018.
But Raymond, who has led the college for seven years and previously announced she would step down next June, said in Tuesday’s meeting that she did not think Lutnick’s lying about when he last had contact with Epstein was enough of a trigger.
Some alumni, supporting Raymond’s decision, have noted there is no evidence Lutnick participated in Epstein’s crimes or improprieties.
“I understand that students might feel strongly in support of wanting to change the name, but I don’t believe there’s a basis to do so,” said Robert Swift, a Philadelphia lawyer and former board member who was on the call Tuesday. “I have serious differences with Howard politically, but that’s not relevant either.”
Swift, 79, a 1968 Haverford graduate who served on the board for 12 years, said Lutnick, a former chair of the college’s board of managers, was generous and served the board well.
“His heart was in the right place,” Swift said.
Some were calling for Lutnick’s removal even before the Epstein connection because they did not like his politics, said one alumnus who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
“I don’t think it’s fair to remove someone’s name from a building simply because you don’t like their politics,” the alumnus said.
George Parker, a 1960 alumnus and a professor of finance at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, said Haverford should rely on its Quaker roots, which requires governing by consensus.
“We do not have consensus,” Parker, a Quaker originally from the Philadelphia area, said of the Lutnick matter, “and where we do not have consensus, I do not think we should take action.”
Lutnick’s relationship with Haverford
Haverford has been in contact with Lutnick. Michael B. Kim, chair of Haverford’s board of managers and a private equity firm leader in Korea, said during the Zoom call that Lutnick communicated he is especially hurt that his alma mater is taking part in what he feels is a witch hunt, according to meeting accounts.
The board agrees with Raymond’s decision, he said.
Lutnick’s relationship with the highly selective, small liberal arts college on the Main Line goes back decades. He lost his mother to cancer when he was in high school and then his father one week into his freshman year. Haverford’s president at the time waived his costs and he graduated in 1983 with an economics degree.
Former chairman of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, he served on Haverford’s board for 21 years, the last three as chair, until 2015. His name was put on the library after a then-record $25 million donation he and his wife made in 2014. Lutnick has given the school $65 million and is one of its biggest donors.
His Epstein ties gained scrutiny earlier this year. A Commerce Department spokesperson told the Associated Press that Lutnick had had “limited interactions” with Epstein, with his wife in attendance, and had not been accused of “wrongdoing.”
A request to the Commerce Department’s press office to speak with Lutnick got no response.
Under Haverford’s gift policy, the school can rename a building if “the continued use of the name may be deemed detrimental to the college, or if circumstances change regarding the reason for the naming.”
Schulze, the former school superintendent, said he thinks that threshold has been met and a full discussion is needed.
“Somebody else should take over if [Raymond’s] not ready to do that,” he said.
Rob Riordan, a 1964 graduate and Trenton native who lives in Cambridge, Mass., said he was upset Raymond did not honor a request from an overwhelming majority of students at a plenary meeting who requested a committee be formed
“To me, that felt like a violation,” said Riordan, 84, an educator who helped start charter schools in the San Diego area.
Several alumni pointed out that nearby Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges have removed names of controversial figures from buildings in recent years.
Pearlstine, who was on the Tuesday call, first wrote to Raymond and Kim in July 2025, urging that Lutnick’s name be removed. His concerns are not political, he said, but rather about behavior that conflicts with Haverford’s values.
“Howard Lutnick is a powerful Trump administration cabinet officer who proudly helps the most lawless President in our country’s history implement policies that trample upon human rights, due process, rule of law, and respect for the independence and integrity of institutions of higher learning,” he wrote.
It was not always that way. Ignatius, 67, who lives in Stonington, Conn., said he recalled interviewing Lutnick on stage at Haverford in 2015 and the good will in the audience toward him. Lutnick, who lost his brother and many of his company’s employees in 9/11, talked about the aftermath and how the company helped care for victims.
“His trajectory since then has been similar to Rudy Giuliani’s,” Ignatius wrote to Raymond and Kim last August. “He has squandered the goodwill he built up after 9/11 and become a partisan troll, espousing values that are inconsistent with — and offensive to — the ideals that Haverford stands for.”
