World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder hailed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman for his decision to halt his donations to the University of Pennsylvania over its handling of campus antisemitism — making him one of the few non-Jewish donors to do so — at an award dinner in Huntsman’s honor this week.

“Jon Huntsman is one of those rare individuals who is not afraid of facing the mob,” Lauder said as he presented the WJC’s Theodor Herzl Award to the former governor and U.S. ambassador to Singapore, China and Russia.

In his speech on Tuesday night, Lauder said the WJC was expanding its area of operations, warning that anti-Western and antisemitic “Marxist indoctrination” was taking place in schools around the world.

“For the last 88 years, the World Jewish Congress has focused on politics. But today, we are adding education to our focus and the global fight against antisemitism, extremism and the assault on Western civilization,” Lauder said.

“We saw this happening in 1936 when the world would not listen, and we hear the same silence today and it’s deafening,” he said. “None of us can be silent. I can assure you that I will not be silent, and the World Jewish Congress will not be silent in the face of this hatred towards the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”

Several hundred people gathered in Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art for the annual Theodor Herzl Award Dinner on Tuesday night. 

The award, named for the founder of modern political Zionism, has been awarded to top political figures over the years, including former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, President Joe Biden, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Last October, Huntsman was one of several prominent philanthropists and University of Pennsylvania alumni to halt donations to the school due to administrators’ inaction in response to campus antisemitism, among them Apollo Global Management co-founder Mark Rowan and Lauder himself.

“Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher [education] was built to obviate,” Huntsman wrote in an email to then-President Liz Magill.

Accepting the award, Huntsman noted his longtime connection to the Jewish community, highlighting his familiarity — as a Mormon — with being a religious minority.

“While I was at Penn in the 1980s, I found myself spending time and attending events at Hillel House,” Huntsman recalled. “And then in the mid 1990s, when I was working with our family business in Utah, along with my brother Paul who’s here, I began to get to know about the work of Chabad-Lubavitch.”

Huntsman added that Rabbi Benny Zippel, executive director at Chabad-Lubavitch of Utah, who attended the award dinner with him, has remained a close friend of his over the years, even accompanying him to Israel when he was governor.

“It’s only a small exaggeration to say that anytime I arrive in a new city anywhere in the world, Rabbi Benny makes sure a Chabad representative comes to pray with me,” Huntsman said, adding — drawing a laugh — that Chabad shluchim (emissaries) are “almost as aggressive as the Mormon missionaries, of which I was once one.”

Also at the dinner, The Teddy Kollek Award for the Advancement of Jewish Culture, was awarded to Tal Huber, one of the Israeli graphic designers behind the “Kidnapped from Israel” posters, which have become a constant in New York City, and cities across the world in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. On Oct. 8, Huber suspended operations of Giraff, her design firm, to focus on the project. 

“Like so many Israelis, I felt a need to act,” Huber said. “Thousands of posters are plastered throughout streets around the world. The vandalization of posters shows antisemitism is still very much alive.”