Billionaire Harvard donor Ken Griffin says elite colleges produce ‘whiny snowflakes,’ stops donations

Billionaire Harvard University donor Ken Griffin said Tuesday he has stopped financially supporting the university, accusing elite institutions of creating “whiny snowflakes” instead of focusing on education.  

Griffin, the founder of Citadel and worth more than $30 billion, has contributed some $500 million to Harvard in his lifetime.  

At the MFA Network Miami conference, he told CNBC in an interview he has stopped the donations but would “like that to change.” 

“And I’ve made that clear to members of the corporate board. 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,” Griffin said.  

He went further to chastise all elite universities, saying they create “whiny snowflakes” and raised concerns they are “going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions, a DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] agenda that seems to have no real end game.” 

Griffin previously said he would not hire any Harvard student who signed the infamous open letter at the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war that blamed Israel solely for the Oct. 7 attack.  

In the interview, he condemned antisemitism and expressed his displeasure with former Harvard President Claudine Gay for her answer at the December House Education Committee hearing on whether calls for genocide against Jewish people would be considered harassment.  

“This is a simple answer: ‘You can ask my lawyers, but I’m going to tell you as the president of fill-in-the-blank university, there is no tolerance for calls to genocide on my campus,’” Griffin said.  

Harvard and several other schools have faced criticism from all sides over their response to campus antisemitism and Islamophobia since the war began, and Griffin is far from the first donor to cut ties.

The Hill has reached out to Harvard for comment.