News of a $3 billion gift quickly swept Carnegie Mellon University’s campus amid a day of bagpipes, confetti and snacks, bringing mixed reactions among students worried about the potential for political influence.
The largest donation to U.S. higher education also leaves unanswered questions about how CMU will spend half of Pittsburgh’s share of the investment and has prompted scrutiny from some students over donor Kenneth Griffin’s new seat on its governing board.
Griffin’s gift will largely go toward building a new campus in Miami, continuing a recent trend of prestigious universities setting up South Florida outposts, and marking CMU’s fourth branch campus. One-third of the gift will benefit CMU’s base in Pittsburgh, with $500 million allocated for renaming and investing in the university’s School of Computer Science and the other half for supporting the university’s “highest priorities.”
It is unclear what those priorities will be. CMU declined requests to comment from Public Source, and Griffin did not respond.
University President Farnam Jahanian told the New York Times that the donation will help make the school more affordable, but didn’t elaborate how.
Griffin, a billionaire Harvard grad and owner of the hedge fund Citadel, said at a campus celebration Wednesday that he chose to partner with CMU because of its creativity and “willingness to step out of the box.”
The new school in Miami will not be structured around departments or majors. Instead, it will focus on “societal grand challenge areas” like national security, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing and energy and climate resiliency, Jahanian said during an event marking the gift.
Some professors and students said they hope Griffin’s gift will improve student life on campus and cement CMU’s position as an innovative institution.
Others on campus cited Griffin’s bankrolling of Republican candidates and pro-Israel viewpoints as reasons to question whether strings are attached to the record-breaking gift.
Cementing a legacy or pushing ideology?
Davarian Baldwin, an expert on higher education and urban development, said today’s political climate leaves universities more beholden to the ideological interests of their donors.
“We have entered into a new era where not only do [donors] want their name or legacy imprinted on the campus, they want their political ideology and their corporate interests reflected in the actual curriculum and the running of the university,” Baldwin, professor and director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College, said.
CMU has not outlined plans to shift curriculum or university operations because of Griffin’s gift. His donation did afford him a seat on the school’s board of trustees, which governs the university, but it is not uncommon for large donors to sit on boards.
Ph.D. student Christa Michel said her initial excitement over Griffin’s donation weakened after learning he’d join the board, which she called “troubling.”
She recalled previous comments Griffin made asking for his alma mater Harvard to embrace “Western values,” and political views expressed during a Wednesday interview with CNBC about his donation.
Griffin, seated next to Jahanian, told CNBC that students believing in socialism was “economic illiteracy” and said universities need to “get back to basics, back to common sense, back to academic rigor.”
“We need to educate our young men and women in the sciences, in economics, in the humanities to think critically and carefully. That’s really what Carnegie Mellon represents,” Griffin said.
Griffin has also criticized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher ed, referring to them as an “agenda,” and said that students participating in pro-Palestine protests were engaging in “performative art.”
CMU College Democrats wrote in a statement to Public Source that the organization is happy to see investment in the school, but Griffin’s involvement “puts the censorship of the Fence into a new context.”
Over the last year, CMU has faced persistent free speech challenges surrounding an often-painted, student-run concrete barrier on campus known as the Fence. It was shut down last summer for the first time in its 100-year history after students wrote a protest message against President Donald Trump’s appearance at the school.
Since Trump’s visit, the university has ramped up condemning Fence messages that it deems to contain threatening language. This summer, phrases such as a Yiddish translation of “Death to Zionism” and “Free Palestine by any means necessary” prompted investigations and campus restrictions for those involved.
The Fence’s rules were revised in September, drawing critique from campus members.
CMU admin could repaint Fence in emergency under new guidelines
Carnegie Mellon’s icon of campus expression has traditionally been governed entirely by students, but a year of controversy has led the administration to assert the right to repaint to avert “physical harm.”
Donor to Republicans, target of one Democrat
Griffin’s hedge fund, Citadel, employs 3,300 and is headquartered in Miami. Forbes ranks him as the world’s 33rd richest person with a net worth of $58 billion.
His company has ties with CMU. In 2015, Citadel donated an undisclosed amount to CMU’s School of Computer Science, allowing the school to renovate computer labs and study spaces. The school dedicated a study space to the company afterwards.
Griffin’s CMU gift is far from his first foray into higher ed philanthropy. He has also given more than $220 million to the University of Chicago’s economics department and $20 million to scholarships at Miami Dade College.
His gifts have at times had political strings attached. After giving more than $500 million to Harvard, he said he would stop donating following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent campus protests. Still, he told The New York Times this week that the university has made progress on problems including antisemitism and he expected to “support Harvard for decades to come.”
Griffin’s wealth has also made him a political foil. He made news in April when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, featured the billionaire’s Central Park South condominium, purchased in 2019 for $238 million, in social media posts making an argument for a tax on ultraluxury homes. Griffin then threatened that his company, Citadel, could withdraw backing from a proposed Midtown economic development project.
The tax passed in May, reportedly pushing the annual levy on Griffin’s apartment from $858,000 to an eventual $4 million.
In 2024, Griffin donated at least $20 million to political action groups that ran ads backing Dave McCormick’s successful campaign to unseat Pennsylvania’s incumbent senator, Democrat Bob Casey. Republican McCormick beat Casey by 0.2 percentage points.
In a Wednesday morning post on X, McCormick praised Griffin’s gift to CMU. “I know what my friend Ken Griffin’s extraordinary $3 billion investment means for CMU and Pittsburgh … It’s a huge vote of confidence in an institution that is helping shape America’s future.”
There’s no sign Griffin is spending heavily on Pennsylvania politics this year, though The Wall Street Journal reported in July that he poured $40 million into helping Republicans in U.S. Senate races this year.
Emphasis on computer science, Pittsburgh impact
At Wednesday’s event, Mayor Corey O’Connor praised Griffin’s gift and its focus on supporting CMU’s School of Computer Science. O’Connor said the $500 million earmarked for the school — renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science — will help Pittsburgh attract more talent.
“The connection that now we have in Miami is going to get us to talk to businesses and companies and locate them in Pittsburgh,” he said.
Griffin told CNBC that “all great cities in America are anchored by great universities,” and said the future of the U.S. is being written in Pittsburgh because of CMU.
“Around this campus, there’s a hundred different robotics companies. Many of them started, many of them run by people who are graduates of Carnegie Mellon,” Griffin said. “These are the companies that will create the re-industrialization of America.”
Griffin’s gift to the university’s School of Computer Science aims to build on CMU’s legacy of computer science innovation, according to a university announcement. Sixty years ago, CMU was first to offer an undergraduate course in computer programming, and it later created the first degree in artificial intelligence.
Computer science professor Jonathan Aldrich said the gift will strengthen CMU’s rolet in AI development, and help move the school into the next phase of computer science development. While he doesn’t yet know specifics of how the gift will be used in the Griffin School of Computer Science, he said it’s likely to spawn new research with wide-ranging impacts.
“It’s an exciting time for CMU,” he said. “I think it’ll be great for the university. It’ll be great for the Pittsburgh region, and hopefully … it’ll be great for the world too.”
Maddy Franklin reports on higher ed for Pittsburgh’s Public Source, in partnership with Open Campus, and can be reached at madison@publicsource.org.
Charlie Wolfson and Colleen Murphy contributed.
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