The donation by Kenneth Griffin, intended mostly to help build a campus in Miami, was the biggest single gift in the history of U.S. higher education.
Page F6From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 30 September 2026
Ken Griffin gives Carnegie Mellon $3 billion; California's billionaire tax still can't clear a majority.
As it ran on the front
Proposition 40 taxes about 200 Californians worth a billion dollars or more, five percent of net worth, one time, with the proceeds going to the state's health system. It needs a majority of voters to become law.
On August 25, two committees — Building a Better California, and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes — opened an advertising campaign against it, backed in reporting by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel.…
…(cont) On September 16, the New York Post put support at 52 percent, with what it called a catch. On September 21, a group of Nobel-winning economists called the measure a potential turning point in the fight between democracy and oligarchy. By September 22, the Hill's polling found support had dropped under half. It has since settled at 48 percent — clearing a majority once, in mid-September, and sitting below it since.
This week, while that number sat under fifty, Citadel's Ken Griffin signed the largest single gift in the history of American higher education: $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, most of it earmarked to build a campus in Miami. The university announced it Wednesday. NBC and the New York Times confirmed the figure and its purpose the same day.
No vote decided this one. No committee filed against it. No advertising campaign ran for or against it, because none was needed — Griffin's fortune answers to no electorate, and Wednesday's signature settled the matter before Thursday's papers went out.
Reconcile the two ledgers, hon. The gift from one billionaire took one signature and closed inside a single news cycle. Both are billionaire money moving through American institutions this same week. One kind asks your permission first. The other one doesn't file a request; it files a press release.
The gap is the mechanism. A tax needs 50 percent plus one of a state. A gift needs one man who already has the money deciding where it lands, and Carnegie Mellon, not California's hospitals, is where this one landed.
“One billionaire can't buy a poll past fifty percent no matter how many weeks of ads he runs against it, and another billionaire just moved three billion dollars into a university with a signature. That's not two stories, that's the same door with two different locks: one needs your vote, the other just needs his money. Guess which one he can afford.”
“Ken Griffin's gift is voluntary — that's the whole point, nobody made him write that check, Carnegie Mellon gets a campus, students get an education, and comparing that to a mandatory tax is comparing charity to confiscation. Although I suppose calling a five-percent, one-time assessment on two hundred people "confiscation" is — did I say confiscation? Strike that, I meant "job-killing overreach." Strike that too.”
Earlier in this story
- Billionaires' ad blitz enters sixth week; their tax polls 52, then 45, then 48 percent By Ruth · the breakfast edition, 30 September 2026
The receipts
Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, according to an announcement from the institution on Wednesday. The donation is the largest individual gift in higher education history and the largest donation ever made by the hedge fund manager. “Carnegie Mellon University has made profound…
Billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist Ken Griffin is announcing the largest-ever donation from an individual to a university. Griffin’s $3 billion donation to Carnegie Mellon University is record-setting and comes with equally high ambitions. Reporting for TODAY, NBC’s Stephanie Gosk sits down with Griffin as well as the…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.