This week, Harvard University announced it will rename its graduate school of arts and sciences after billionaire donor Ken Griffin, who has given $300 million dollars to one of the richest universities in the world.
Griffin, CEO of the multinational hedge fund Citadel, is a mega-donor for the Republican party. In August 2022, Griffin gave $5 million to the Florida Republican Party, and at least $100 million more in 2022 to candidates, political action committees, and elected officials with conservative agendas. He is also a financial backer of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the presumed 2024 presidential candidate who spearheaed the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law and education reforms that make it easier to ban books from school libraries.
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Griffin also famously outbid crypto investors to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution for $43 million.
“Harvard University is a not-for-profit organization, it is not taxed,” Koby Ljunggren, president of the Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Automobile Workers (UAW) told Motherboard. “This is Harvard, basically taking this transfer of wealth from a billionaire, while every other public university around Harvard is suffering and underfunded. It blows my mind in a way because it really emphasizes the dynamic of private institutions versus public institutions and the destruction and tearing down of public education in the U.S.”
A Harvard spokesperson did not comment when reached by Motherboard, but sent a press release from the university saying that Griffin’s donation to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences “comes at a moment of opportunity as the School undertakes a broad strategic planning process focused on delivering a forward-looking vision for excellence in graduate education, graduate education, faculty support and development, and organization of academic communities.”
The donation also comes to Harvard at a moment when Republican-controlled states are taking over public school districts, voting to defund public libraries, and introducing legislation that criminalizes educators and librarians for providing access to books related to race, sex, and gender.
Griffin’s gift will be deployed at the discretion of the arts and sciences dean, which could be used to fund a number of things, from core operations to new faculty hires to student financial aid. Ljunggren calls a lot of donations Harvard accepts “dirty money,” but suggests that the money should be distributed to graduate students and non-tenure track faculty whose positions are more vulnerable and more likely to be exploited.
“I think a lot of people would like to see this reinvested in either the adjunct lecturers and the non tenure track faculty that already exists here who are underpaid for the amount of work that they do,” Ljunggren added. “I think that’s where the investment should be.”
Just last month, Motherboard reported that Harvard, which has the largest endowment of any university in the world, was instructing its grad students to sign up for food stamps. This is despite the fact that a large portion of Harvard’s graduate student population are international students, and in most cases, you have to be a U.S. citizen to qualify for government programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Harvard’s grad student workers first unionized in 2020, and earlier this year, undergraduate workers and non-tenure track faculty also announced their intention to unionize.
As for whether the gift does more reputational harm than good for Harvard, Ljunggren says the graduate students are deeply concerned.
“It’s the name attached to it that makes us all deeply uncomfortable, knowing the role that this billionaire has played in pushing for, like, really disgusting legislation across the country, especially legislation that deeply affects what we know as academic freedom,” Ljunggren added. “This man’s name is going to be attached to our graduate school, which is the premier PhD granting school within our institution. I mean, that is abhorrent.”
