More Bad News for Harvard As Its Finances Take Another Massive Hit

AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Harvard University's finances may be about to take another significant hit. 

The Harvard Crimson reported on Tuesday that billionaire hedge fund manager and megadonor Kenneth C. Griffin would be pausing his donations to the university. 

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Griffin, who donated $300 million to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced his decision during his keynote address Managed Funds Association in Miami on Tuesday. 

“I’d like that to change and I have made that clear to members of the corporate board,” he said. “But until Harvard makes it very clear that they’re going to resume their role as educating young American men and women to be leaders, to be problem solvers, to take on difficult issues, I’m not interested in supporting the institution.”

The 55-year-old added that he was tired of "whiny snowflakes" promoting their far-left progressive ideology through various methods like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. 

“Will America’s elite university get back to their roots of educating American children – young adults – to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions, a DEI agenda that seems to have no real endgame, and just being loss in the wilderness?” Griffin asked.

Griffin, who is the owner and CEO of Citadel, also weighed in on the issue of antisemitism by confirming he would follow the lead of fellow billionaire Bill Ackman and not hire any students who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israel after it was attacked by Hamas last October. 

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The hedge fund manager, who graduated from the university in 1988, has donated a staggering $500 million to the university throughout his career. 

His generosity was acknowledged by the Crimson, which explained:

Griffin is arguably one of the most generous Harvard donors in the University’s modern history. The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is named after him as well as Harvard College’s financial aid office. His decision to stop donating could have major financial implications for the University, which is already struggling to contain a wave of donor backlash.

Griffin is the second billionaire donor to suspend contributions to the university in recent months. Billionaire philanthropist Leonard V. Blavatnik, who gave $200 million to Harvard Medical School in 2018, similarly announced late last year that he would be suspending his donations to the institution. 

In October, meanwhile, shipping and chemicals magnate Idan Ofer and his wife Batia -- worth an estimated $14 billion -- resigned from their positions on the executive board of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government over their anger about the antisemitic student groups on campus supporting the Hamas attack.

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Griffin's announcement comes several weeks after the university's far-left president, Claudine Gay, reluctantly announced her resignation after giving Congressional testimony in which she refused to condemn calls by Harvard students for genocide as well as a growing body of evidence that she was a serial plagiarizer. 

Despite her obvious failures, Gay repeatedly refused to tender her resignation and reportedly threatened to sue the university if she were removed. 

Eventually, she succumbed to the pressure and handed in her resignation, although somewhat predictably blamed it on "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus" rather than her personal failures. 

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