https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/us/university-of-pennsylvania-donors-israel-hamas.html

DOES THIS HEADLINE MAKE SENSE?

WHO WROTE IT, AND WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Today's NYT has an interesting article about alumni who give big bucks to the University of Pennsylvania. Although the article was apparently sparked by the campus reaction to the war in the Middle East, it asks a much larger, though poorly stated, question: “Who Decides Penn’s Future: Donors or the University?”

Whoever wrote this headline seems to have made a category mistake. “Donors” is a term that refers to individual financial contributors, i.e., a group of people. But what does “the University” refer to in this headline? The (anthropomorphized) institution itself? UPenn professors? UPenn students? Professors have input into at least some university decisions. And there are issues about which students may have input as well. But the people who call the shots on a day-to-day basis are university administrators. Certain people decide Penn’s future, not some abstraction called “the University.”

A more honest and accurate headline might have been: “Who Decides Penn’s Future: Donors or Administrators?” Of course, that formulation leaves out several other interested parties: students, non-donor alumni, and the Philadelphia community. Perhaps a circumscribed question would be more germane to UPenn’s role as it relates to the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians: “Should U Penn address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, if so, how?”