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Carnegie Mellon University Announces Historic $3B Gift from Ken Griffin

47 points · 48 comments · Guyadou

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wrs · 1790799936 · focus · HN ↗
I’m a CMU SCS alum (actually I predate SCS being a full school). Please, someone make me feel better about this. They’re renaming the school after this person.
1. ro_bit · 1790800509 · focus · HN ↗
  Who is he?
  1. pinkmuffinere · 1790800583 · focus · HN ↗
    I think the CEO of Citadel Capital?
  2. reticulates · 1790801169 · focus · HN ↗
    Boogeyman of the meme stocks
  3. pjmorris · 1790801831 · focus · HN ↗
    CEO of Citadel Capital. He's one of the people featured in 'The Quants How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It', Scott Patterson.
  4. addaon · 1790810498 · focus · HN ↗
    Pretty good baseball player.
    His son was even better.
    Wait, I guess this is someone else?
2. method_capital · 1790800565 · focus · HN ↗
  Sure. It's $3B for your school. Who gives a shit what names the buildings have on them. I'll never understand you whiners.
  $2B for new Miami campus (could have been in NYC, but well ...) $1B - split w $500M for CS Dept - for Pittsburg campus
  "CMU Miami will invert the traditional higher education model by organizing learning and inquiry around societal challenges rather than academic majors. It will be entirely designed and built — from first blueprints to final beam — to drive revolutionary breakthroughs that address society’s defining challenges."
  1. BoggleOhYeah · 1790801012 · focus · HN ↗
    If anything, it could have been in Chicago but Kenny ran to Miami after spending a small fortune trying to install another puppet in the Illinois governor’s office after his previous one, Bruce Rauner, ran the state into the gutter.
    alephnerd · 1790801592 · focus · HN ↗
    Ken played a role in bringing the UIUC CS program to Chicago which itself is a major feeder into Citadel. Citadel was one of the founding partners for City Scholars [0] along with DRW and Ocient.
    [0] - <a href="https://cityscholars.grainger.illinois.edu/" rel="nofollow">https://cityscholars.grainger.illinois.edu/
    shimman · 1790801872 · focus · HN ↗
    Are we suppose to feel good that more bright students are working for deeply undemocratic and anti-human companies? I'd rather these people do something more productive than helping financiers make slightly more billions of dollars.
    What a complete waste of human capacity if so.
    alephnerd · 1790801932 · focus · HN ↗
    That is up to the students and alums of these programs. And many do non-profit and humanitarian work as well.
    The world is competitive. It is what it is.
    To have the power to affect change you need power.
    pxmpxm · 1790808785 · focus · HN ↗
    I was under the impression that even people on the left now find these sort of strictly-performative outbursts passé ?
    kddkdkkfjf · 1790831605 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    BoggleOhYeah · 1790805919 · focus · HN ↗
    Considering that push into Chicago started with Rauner, I’m not surprised.
    It was suppose to also include a large campus in the Loop but that floundered for years and was eventually cancelled when UIUC decided to instead be a partner in the new quantum computing center on the south side.
    alephnerd · 1790808047 · focus · HN ↗
    The push into Chicago was independent of Springfield. It was almost entirely private sector driven and Pritzker's PortCos also participated.
    The Quantum Exchange being in South Side occured becuase it's tied to Argonne, Fermilab, and by extension UChicago.
    Once you climb high enough the ladder everyone basically has the exact same interests, especially in cities like Chicago.
    It's the same way Penny (JB's sister and former Secretary of Commerce under Obama) and Ken donate oodles to Harvard because it is their undergrad alma mater (eg. Pritzker Commons, Pritzker Hall, Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences).
    Also, Ken couldn't control Rauner given that Rauner was equally wealthy (he founded and chaired GTCR with Carl Thoma of Thoma Bravo fame).
    Pritzker and Rauner is basically two sides of the same coin where both were essentially retired but in the same circles and decided to compete because of personal ambition.
    ChickeNES · 1790808611 · focus · HN ↗
    And ditto UChicago, Griffin and the Pritzkers have both donated massive sums (Griffin Dept of Econ, Pritzker School of Medicine)
    alephnerd · 1790809026 · focus · HN ↗
    Yep. It's basically noblesse oblige. At that level and stage of life, the main driver is legacy building ("will I be in the history books").
    If someone wanted to live hedonically, you don't need to be a billionaire - a $15-20M net worth would be more than enough.
    Those who make the jump from VHNWI to UHNWI have a whole different mindset and viciousness.
    JB's philanthropy tends to target Duke and Northwestern (his alma mater).
    method_capital · 1790867304 · focus · HN ↗
    Anybody who believes IL was "[run] into the gutter" by Rauner is a partisan to be absolutely forever ignored. Go ahead and reinvent history (many decades of ignorance by the way) IL and the Democratic Chicago party machine have irreparably fucked the state city and it's people forever. They buried the state in debt and paid themselves ever so handsomely (ludicrous pensions and handouts to public union scumbags) ... and that's why many many people of means ... like me ... LEFT. I left before Ken though. Maybe he should have called me?
  2. duped · 1790801832 · focus · HN ↗
    $3 billion dollars from a weirdo that fled to Florida because he was too cheap to pay his taxes, establishing a school to train more weirdos like him, a thousand miles from the actual school and presumably with different curricula/professors/degrees sounds like he's just buying CMU's name for legitimacy on his experimental anti-education project.
    hyperlinerapp · 1790913465 · focus · HN ↗
    It would be dumb not to flee socialists hell holes.
    Wouldn’t you leave?
    FYI the federal government literally has a website for you to send it gift money. I suspect you hadn’t sent any.
3. Maken · 1790800880 · focus · HN ↗
  Who cares? The entire university was named after the first guy who handed them money. It's their oldest tradition.
  1. t0mpr1c3 · 1790803383 · focus · HN ↗
    IIRC Carnegie was the original archetype of the rapacious union-busting wage-suppressing monopolistic billionaire robber baron, and Mellon was all that plus a corrupt self-dealing all-but-impeached laissez-faire Treasury-secretary-cum-megabanker whose deflationary and protectionist response to the Wall Street Crash caused unemployment and destitution on a historic scale.
    But yeah this Griffin guy could give the place a bad name. (Full disclosure, I did a postdoc at the SCS.)
    mmooss · 1790804082 · focus · HN ↗
    Andrew Carnegie no longer has power or influence, so it doesn't matter. Griffin has both, and the school enhances it and becomes a vehicle for it. Will the Miami campus be free to violate Griffin's beliefs? Are 'woke' educational programs allowed?
    AnimalMuppet · 1790867538 · focus · HN ↗
    But Carnegie did, for the rest of his life. Griffin will, for the rest of his life. The distinction you're trying to draw is merely you being a prisoner of the moment.
    mmooss · 1790871803 · focus · HN ↗
    > you being a prisoner of the moment
    ??? You can't go back in time either (though I don't mean to assume!). The moments we're dealing with are now and the future.
    MengerSponge · 1790804153 · focus · HN ↗
    At least those guys had the horse sense to understand the importance of giving something back to the public. The Carnegie libraries are a marvel.
    Their contemporary equivalents seem to be interested in speedrunning a revolution that ends badly for everyone.
    t0mpr1c3 · 1790808980 · focus · HN ↗
    The Jeff Bezos no-dick yacht club is a competitive space. Who is the most repellent -- Ellison? Zuck?
    Musk's narcissism is unsurpassed in that he forsees legacy that excludes the entire human race, except for those aboard his space expedition.
    Only Bill Gates has a bit of the Carnegie trajectory about him. I think there is actually a Gates building at CMU.
4. alephnerd · 1790800911 · focus · HN ↗
  Yes and?
  You went to a school who's founder was a robber baron (Carnegie) who deployed the army to put down a strike [0] and who's other founder (Mellon) caused the Great Depression [1] and whose family funded Trump 2 [2].
  Alternatively, be happy CMU has more capital to continue to build programs.
  [0] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike
  [1] - <a href="https://time.com/archive/6757394/the-cabinet-death-of-mellon/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/archive/6757394/the-cabinet-death-of-mellon...
  [2] - <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9eed9g3vlyo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9eed9g3vlyo
  1. t0mpr1c3 · 1790804115 · focus · HN ↗
    Honeydew you even realise that the Trumper is a different Mellon?
5. monknomo · 1790801194 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm right there with you.
  Renaming after this guy?
  Miami?!
6. hooloovoo_zoo · 1790801316 · focus · HN ↗
  In my experience students will just keep using the old name (sometimes even the name before the old name) in perpetuity. With regard to the new campus, satellite campuses never carry the prestige of the mothership, for schools or companies.
7. boshalfoshal · 1790802148 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't know why you still care about this several decades after graduating. Do you not have an identity outside of graduating from the previously-unsponsored "School of Computer Science"? (By the way, the entire school was funded by and named after another extremely wealthy businessman, but seemingly you don't have many qualms with that).
8. andrewla · 1790802399 · focus · HN ↗
  They're not "renaming" it -- they're "naming" it, right? The School of Computer Science is not currently named for anyone, and his $1B puts his name on the school. It's not like they're changing CMU to KGU.
9. wqtz · 1790802645 · focus · HN ↗
  Does names really matter? Half of all Canadian universities has a building or a faculty named after "Schulich". Most people do not know who that person is.
10. lanthissa · 1790805546 · focus · HN ↗
  net net, 3 billion dollars is going out of of a rich persons pocket and into education.
  thats a good thing.
  also a cmu grad claiming the morality of the money going into education and naming rights matter is hilarious.
  both its founders were worse than ken, and again at least hte money went to something good.
11. hyperlinerapp · 1790913540 · focus · HN ↗
  I personally call my mommy when I need someone to make me feel better.
  “This person” gave $3B. They deserve the name change.
jasonlotito · 1790800505 · focus · HN ↗
For a new school in Florida. Good luck with the government overreach.
conjecTech · 1790803559 · focus · HN ↗
CMU will henceforth stand for Central Miami University
1. ModernMech · 1790816052 · focus · HN ↗
  Used to be they couldn't write CMU on the shirts over a dispute with Central Michigan University.
32kaht · 1790803559 · focus · HN ↗
New tech leaders is the last thing we need. What is this emphasis on leadership anyway? Are they building a NAPOLA in Florida because Pittsburgh is too woke?
1. [deleted] · 1790807522 · focus · HN ↗
  [deleted]
StrangeClone · 1790803681 · focus · HN ↗
Ellon Musk could have found much creative name. Once Musk offered 1B$ to Wikipedia for renaming it to D*kpedia earlier.
diiaann · 1790804214 · focus · HN ↗
Reminds me of the Paul Graham essay on Silicon Valley. Looks like Ken decided the easiest thing was to partially move Carnegie Mellon.
"Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like."
"However, merely creating a new university would not be enough to start a silicon valley. The university is just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon.
To spawn startups, your university has to be in a town that has attractions other than the university. It has to be a place where investors want to live, and students want to stay after they graduate."
mmooss · 1790804371 · focus · HN ↗
Academic and intellectual freedom would seem to be major questions given the size of the gift and the location:
And are they academically and intellectually free from Griffin? Can CMU itself or their Florida school do things and have programs that violate Griffin's beliefs?
And I wonder how CMU intends to handle the limits to academic freedom and other l freedoms in Florida. Maybe being a private university will insulate them? At the heart of this issue: Why is it important to Griffin to put the school in Miami, FL? There are obvious political possibilities.
Freedom isn't incidental; it's the core of what America is and it drives unprecedented innovation and prosperity, among other things.
Also, as someone else posted: How much is this a CMU campus, and how much a Griffin campus for which he paid to use the CMU name?
1. quaddoggy · 1790809048 · focus · HN ↗
  Do you often go peering into the mouths of gift horses?
  1. mmooss · 1790809870 · focus · HN ↗
    Absolutely!
    People giving you money often want something in return. If the something is unstated, be very suspicious. For $3B you could be giving them something priceless - your reputation, independence, or merely your soul. Big numbers tend to blind people; the bigger the number the more wary you should be.
    The most fundamental negotiating advice is that you should always be willing and able to walk away from the deal. 'No' is always an option.
    abstractspoon · 1790813575 · focus · HN ↗
    +1
2. mmooss · 1790829167 · focus · HN ↗
  Griffin is / will be on CMU's board.
  <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/us/3-billion-donation-carnegie-mellon-largest-university-gift.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/us/3-billion-donation-car...
diogenescynic · 1790807043 · focus · HN ↗
Kinda sucks these always go the same universities with plenty of funding instead of a random poorly funded school for normal people.
1. guywithahat · 1790808791 · focus · HN ↗
  Well if you gave three billion dollars to a normal school it would turn into a prestigious university (think Michael Bloomberg donating billions to Hopkins to turn it from a decent second rate university to a world class university).
2. IncreasePosts · 1790810740 · focus · HN ↗
  "My little hundred million": <a href="https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/my-little-hundred-million" rel="nofollow">https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/my-littl...

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