The richest get even richer: Will Harvard ever have enough, now with a new $300 million gift from billionaire Kenneth Griffin

Will Harvard ever have enough? It’s a question one can’t help but ask after the university announced that it had accepted a gift of $300 million from billionaire Kenneth Griffin — the world’s 36th richest person.

Harvard’s endowment — $53.2 billion as of its last annual report — significantly exceeds the cash reserves of many major banks. If Harvard were a for-profit business, its cash reserves would rank seventh among American companies — slightly behind Amazon and GE but ahead of Meta, Coca-Cola, and Ford. If it were a nation, its reserves would rank 40th, just ahead of Kuwait, Qatar, and Egypt.

Harvard’s endowment eclipses that of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest nonprofit in the country, and is nearly triple the size of the Open Society and Ford Foundations, which rank second and third. Among universities, it has a $10 billion edge on Yale, its nearest competitor, and $26 billion more than Princeton University, which Malcolm Gladwell recently described as a perpetual motion machine — meaning the earnings on its endowment were more than enough to let every student attend for free.

In a joint statement, outgoing Harvard president Lawrence Bacow and his anointed successor, Claudine Gay, struggled to say how they would use Griffin’s donation. “These essential resources bolster long-term excellence in teaching and research, foster collaborations across disciplines, and provide a firm foundation for student success,” they wrote. Harvard’s graduation rate is 98%. Its faculty are the highest paid in the Ivy League. The average full professor makes more than $250,000 per year.

The students they serve are even wealthier. According to data collected by the economists Raj Chetty and John Friedman, the mean family income of a Harvard student exceeds $500,000 per year. About as many students come from the top 1% of the income distribution as the bottom 60%.

Consider how much further the money could have gone at a needier institution. At the City University of New York, where I teach, more than half the students come from families making less than $30,000 per year. How far would $300 million go? Harvard is renaming its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after Griffin. At my home institution, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a 5% return on $300 million would be enough to fund free tuition for all of our approximately 2,000 graduate students in perpetuity.

Griffin’s donation increased Harvard’s endowment by approximately .5%.

It could have increased John Jay’s by 4,286%.

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Colleges like mine are widely acknowledged as the engines of upward mobility in the United States. By contrast, Harvard’s core business is keeping rich kids rich. It and its peer institutions remain steadfastly committed to admissions preferences for athletes and the children of alumni, donors, and faculty members, which disproportionately benefit affluent, white students — a hypocrisy which will contribute to the near-certain end of race-based affirmative action by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I can’t help but wonder whether anyone at Harvard asked Griffin to consider other educational institutions that might benefit from his gift or creative ideas that might benefit the surrounding community. Imagine if Griffin sent half his donation to nearby Bunker Hill Community College, and established a pathway for some number of outstanding students to transfer to Harvard upon graduation.

Or don’t.

It’s enough to make one cry.

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, which has dedicated itself to combating inequality draws a distinction between generosity and justice. Generosity is principally about the donor. “When you give money to help a homeless person, you feel good,” Walker explains. “Justice is a deeper engagement where you are actually asking, ‘What are the systemic reasons that put people out onto the streets?’ ” Justice requires consideration of both the good and the harm caused by a gift.

Ken Griffin’s donation may be generous, but it is anything but just.

Mandery, a Harvard graduate, is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.