(Reuters) – Billionaire investor Kenneth Griffin on Saturday called on his alma mater Harvard University to embrace “Western values” and said the chaos across university campuses was the product of a “cultural revolution” in U.S. education. said.
Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel, said in an interview with the Financial Times that over the past decade the United States has “lost sight of education as a means of pursuing truth and acquiring knowledge.”
“Harvard must highlight that it embodies American meritocracy…” Griffin said the school “embraces the Western values that have built one of the world’s greatest nations. ” should be added.
Griffin, who has donated more than $500 million to Harvard University, said in January that he had stopped giving to the school over its response to anti-Semitism on campus.
“What you’re seeing now is the end product of this cultural revolution in American education that’s unfolding on American campuses, especially using the oppressor-oppressed paradigm,” Griffin said. told FT.
“Protests on college campuses are like performing arts…” he said.
“Freedom of speech does not give the right to storm or vandalize buildings,” he added.
“That’s not free speech. That’s just anarchy.”
Griffin’s comments came as dozens of pro-Palestinian activists were arrested at universities across the country in the latest crackdown on protests that have roiled American campuses.
The protesting students are demanding a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza and demanding that the school divest from businesses with ties to Israel.
At least 2,600 people have demonstrated at more than 100 protests in 39 states and Washington, D.C. since the first mass arrest at Columbia University on April 18, according to the nonprofit news organization The Appeal. Participants were detained.
Griffin, who started trading in his dorm at Harvard University, spoke about America’s elite universities at the Managed Funds Association conference in Miami in January and spoke about the “DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) agenda.” He criticized university education for this reason.
(Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by Diane Craft)
