Wall Street titan Ken Griffin, who vowed last fall to never consider hiring students who voiced support for Hamas, slammed pro-Palestinian protests as “performative art” while urging his alma mater, Harvard University, to embrace “Western values.”
The outspoken founder and CEO of giant hedge fund Citadel lamented the “cultural revolution” that has swept across college campuses following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas which claimed the lives of nearly 1,200 Israelis.
The Florida native, who has a net worth valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $38.1 billion, said the US had “lost sight of education as the means of pursuing truth and acquiring knowledge.”
“The narrative on some of our college campuses has devolved to the level that the system is rigged and unfair, and that America is plagued by systemic racism and systemic injustice,” Griffin told Financial Times in an interview over the weekend.
Griffin said that the protests are “the end-product of this cultural revolution in American education playing out on American campuses” in which students operate according to “the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed.”
“The protests on college campuses are almost like performative art, and we’re not actually helping Palestinians or Israelis with these surreal protests,” the 55-year-old Griffin said.
Griffin recommended that students on US campuses focus on less divisive tactics such as organizing food drives to help Palestinians.
Earlier this year, Griffin blasted students at Harvard and other elite universities as “whiny snowflakes.”
The Harvard alum, who has donated more than half a billion dollars to his alma mater, threatened to withhold future support for the school if it failed to adequately crack down on antisemitism.
Bill Ackman, another billionaire hedge fund manager who graduated from Harvard, successfully led a campaign to force the resignation of Claudine Gay as school president.
Both Griffin and Ackman are fierce critics of DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion — blaming the policy for what they perceive as universities’ increased tolerance of antisemitism.
Griffin commented on recent developments on campuses such as Columbia University, where police were called to evict pro-Palestinian students from a building that they had occupied.
“Freedom of speech does not give you the right to storm a building or vandalize it,” said Griffin. “That’s not freedom of speech. That’s just anarchy.”
Griffin likened the pro-Palestinian protests to the Black Lives Matter movement whose adherents posted black squares on their Instagram accounts to show solidarity.
“You didn’t help a single child learn that day how to read, write, or do math better,” he said.
“You want a pat on the back for posting a black screen on your Instagram account? Give me a break. It’s embarrassing.”
Griffin said that he had talked to several wealthy donors to Harvard who expressed “little interest in micromanaging the university.”
On the other hand, the donors expressed “a palpable interest in Harvard serving as a beacon of truth-seeking and meritocracy.”
“Many wealthy donors have valuable insight into transformation and improvement strategies that are clearly needed at this time,” Griffin said.
The Post has sought comment from Citadel and Harvard.
