Harvard megadonor Ken Griffin pulls support from school, calls students 'whiny snowflakes'

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin has paused donations to Harvard University over how it handled antisemitism on campus since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, saying that his alma mater is now educating a bunch of "whiny snowflakes."

The CEO and founder of the Citadel investing firm made the comments during a keynote discussion Tuesday at a conference hosted by the Managed Funds Association Network in Miami.

"Are we going to educate the future members of the House and Senate and the leaders of IBM? Or are we going to educate a group of young men and women who are caught up in a rhetoric of oppressor and oppressee and, 'This is not fair,' and just frankly whiny snowflakes?" Griffin said at the conference.

He continued to say that he's "not interested in supporting the institution ... 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."

USA TODAY reached out to Harvard on Thursday for the Ivy League school's response.

Griffin, who graduated from Harvard in 1989, made a $300 million donation to the university's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in April last year, reported the Harvard Crimson. Griffin has made over $500 million in donations to the school, according to The Crimson.

Griffin is worth $36.8 billion and is the 35th richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg.

Griffin calls students 'snowflakes' won't hire letter signatories

In the keynote, Griffin called Harvard students "whiny snowflakes" and criticized 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 lost in the wilderness?" Griffin said.

In the talk, Griffin announced that neither Citadel Securities nor Citadel LLC will hire applicants who signed a letter holding "the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence" after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel.

Billionaires pull donations

Griffin isn't the only major donor to pause donations to the school over how Harvard has handled speech around the Israel-Hamas war.

Leonard V. Blavatnik, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, paused his donations to the University in December, according to Bloomberg. Blavatnik made a $200 million donation to the Harvard Medical School in 2018, the school's largest donation according to The Crimson.

The decisions come in the wake of a plagiarism scandal, spearheaded in part by Harvard Alumnus and Pershing Square Holdings CEO Bill Ackman, that forced the resignation of former Harvard President Claudine Gay. The campaign began after Congressional testimony from Gay and other university presidents about antisemitic speech on campus was widely criticized.

Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, had only stepped into the role over the summer. But she resigned just six months into her tenure, the shortest of any president in Harvard history.