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Ken Griffin has called on Harvard University to embrace “Western values,” with the billionaire hedge fund manager and donor saying the unrest sweeping college campuses was the product of a “cultural revolution” in American education.
Griffin, who founded the $63 billion US hedge fund Citadel and gave more than $500 million to his alma mater, told the Financial Times that the US had “lost sight of education as a means of seek truth and acquire knowledge” over the past decade. .
“The discourse on some of our college campuses has evolved to the point that the system is rigged and unfair, and America is rife with systemic racism and injustice,” he said in an interview.
Universities like Harvard, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been consumed by sometimes violent protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, which have pitted wealthy donors against student activists.
Bill Ackman, another hedge fund billionaire, led a successful campaign for Harvard’s president to resign. Marc Rowan, director of the private equity group Apollo Global Management, has fueled a heated debate over governance at the University of Pennsylvania, whose Wharton School of Business has reported a decline in donations.
“What you see today is the end product of this cultural revolution in American education that is taking place particularly on American campuses, using the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed,” Griffin said.
“Protests on college campuses are almost like performance art, and we are not actually helping Palestinians or Israelis with these surreal protests,” the 55-year-old financier said, adding that during humanitarian crises Previously, Americans focused on practical help. , such as organizing food drives.
As an undergraduate at Harvard, Griffin had a satellite dish installed on the roof of his dorm room so he could trade convertible bonds, laying the groundwork for the launch of his hedge fund in 1990.
He has since given the institution about a quarter of the more than $2 billion he has devoted to philanthropic efforts, making him one of the university’s largest donors in its modern history. A record $16 billion profit for Citadel investors in 2022 made the Griffin firm the best-performing hedge fund of all time.
In January, the financier called Harvard students “whining snowflakes” and said he was suspending donations to the university over its handling of anti-Semitism on campus, which he blamed on its “DEI program”.
His criticism of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies came amid a leadership crisis that culminated earlier this month with the resignation of its president Claudine Gay. With an endowment of $50 billion, Harvard is the richest university in the world.
Asked what Harvard should do next, Griffin told the Financial Times: “Harvard should put at the forefront (the fact that it) champions meritocracy in America and will train the next generation of American leaders in business, government, health care and the philanthropic community. Harvard will embrace our Western values that have built one of the greatest nations in the world, encourage those values in students, and ask them to demonstrate those values throughout their lives.
Griffin presents himself as a supporter of free speech and the promotion of the “American dream.” Those who know him expect that one day he will enter politics.
“Free speech does not give you the right to storm a building or vandalize it,” Griffin said. “This is not freedom of speech. It’s just anarchy.
The Citadel founder drew a parallel between protests on American campuses and the Black Lives Matter social movement, when some social media users posted black squares on Instagram, in solidarity with the fight for racial justice.
“You didn’t help a single child that day learn to read, write or do math better,” he said. “Want a pat on the back for posting a black screen on your Instagram account? Leave me alone. It’s embarassing.”
Donors’ withdrawal of millions of dollars in funding intended to punish American universities for their responses to Hamas’ attack on Israel has reignited questions about the influence of plutocrats over American universities.
Griffin said the many wealthy Harvard donors he spoke with, however, were “uninterested in micromanaging the university.” “There is palpable interest in Harvard as a beacon of truth-seeking and meritocracy,” he said: “Many wealthy donors have valuable insight into the transformation and improvement strategies that are clearly necessary at the present time. »
Additional reporting by Joshua Chaffin in New York
News Source : www.ft.com
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