Barstool Sports owner doubles down on not hiring Ivy League grads

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The founder and owner of Barstool Sports is doubling down on not hiring recent graduates from Ivy League universities for his popular sports and culture website.

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Dave Portnoy, who runs the popular sports and culture website, spoke Monday about the wave of anti-Semitism that has swept schools such like Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), following testimonies from school presidents in Washington, D.C.

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“There’s a difference between free speech and hate speech,” Portnoy told Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co. “And when you’re endangering people and causing harm, I think you got to put a stop to it. It’s called common sense.”

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Portnoy said a lot of people have contacted him about his new hiring policy.

“It’s not only me,” he said. “I think a lot of leaders have to do it. It was disgusting what those deans and presidents did under oath. It makes no sense to me.

“I don’t know how, if you can’t condemn genocide, I don’t care whether we’re talking Jews, Muslims, any group of people, then you don’t deserve to be in a position of power. You got to get out.”

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Portnoy pointed out two employees at Barstool have been “grandfathered in” as they were hired before his Instagram post nearly a week ago where he shared video of school leaders having difficulty condemning students calling for the genocide of Jews during a congressional hearing about anti-Semitism on college campuses.

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“Not that this will make a huge difference but moving forward I will not hire any student who graduates from any of these schools until these deans step down,” he wrote Dec. 6.

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There was an immediate backlash to the answers given by UPenn President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay. On Sunday, Magill announced her resignation while Harvard leadership argued against terminating Gay in a statement Tuesday morning.

Portnoy called the initial answers to Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s questions “unacceptable” after she asked university leaders if calling for the genocide of Jews on campus violates their school’s code of conduct.

“I don’t care if you’re Jewish or not. If you know a Jew or just have a degree of basic human decency, calling for the murder of an entire group of people should outrage you.”

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