According to Variety, the USC School Of Cinematic Arts has refused to accept a $5 million donation from Harvey Weinstein to fund “an endowment for female filmmakers.” Weinstein mentioned the donation in his earliest comments after the New York Times story detailing the decades of sexual assault allegations against him came out, noting that he had been organizing the endowment for a year and that the timing of it was just a coincidence. A number of people at USC evidently didn’t buy that, possibly because it sounds like total bullshit, with one student named Tiana Lowe starting a Change.org petition demanding that the university “finally muster the moral spine to refuse Harvey Weinstein’s blood money.” It’s unclear if that specifically had an impact on USC’s decision to refuse the money, but either way it’s an indication of just how controversial the endowment had become.
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