On Sept. 30, Citadel founder Ken Griffin pledged more than $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, the largest individual gift in the history of higher education. Much of it will build a new CMU campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, which is expected to enroll its first students in 2028, pending regulatory approval. Griffin described the challenge facing universities as how to “reignite both the belief and the realization of the possibility of the American dream.”
Griffin’s gift is an extraordinary act of philanthropy. It also raises a question philanthropy alone can’t answer. Must stewardship wait until a fortune is given away, or should conscience be part of how the fortune is made?
