Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Scott Schiff. We are pleased to have Atlas society senior scholar professor Richard Salzman talking about an important topic today on the significance of rich alumni defunding their alma maters. After Richard's opening remarks, we'll be taking questions from you. So if you want to request to speak, we'll try to get to as many of you as possible.
Richard, thanks so much for doing this topic.
What is the significance?
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Thank you, Scott, for hosting and thanks for joining. The significance is for a long time, there has been a kind of mindless, nostalgic, knee jerk kind of attitude toward answering those alumni office funding requests. And people just send in the money, and especially rich people send in lots of money, and we can talk about the reasons why. I'm going to spend about 20 minutes on this and then open it up last 40 minutes for questions and comments. But some of it may be due to the whole theory that they accept even though they're successful. Please give back to the community. Please give back to your alma mater, because clearly they were part of your success. Clearly, you would not have made billions on Wall street or elsewhere had you not gone to Harvard or Upenn or Cornell or Yale. And some people believe that, of course, there are many multimillionaires and billionaires, as you know, that quit college and then still give to their college even though they quit. My theme tonight will be that we need a new kind of philosophy of philanthropy. Now, that's a bigger topic, but I'm going to use the concretes of the last three or four months, which are very interesting to illuminate that. Now, those who don't know the context and haven't been reading the headlines, on October 7, Hamas brutally and gruesomely attacked Israel. And this instigated was a catalyst, if you will, for people coming out and saying what they thought of it. And it was terribly obvious that many, many on campuses were coming out for the terrorists and against Israel. And it's nice to see David Kelly joining us here tonight. David Kelly, who founded the Atlas Society in 1991. David Kelly and I, in January 2023, did a clubhouse called antisemitism and anti capitalism. And we not only discussed philosophical and historical roots of antisemitism, but I think one of the unique things about that is we tied it to anticapitalism. That's also going to be one of my points tonight, that this is a broader problem in the universities and that there's a commonality between those who hate capitalism and those who hate Jews, which many of the haters will say, personify and exemplify capitalism. So no big mystery there.
Well, after the October 7 attack, about two months later, December 5, I think it was, there was a congressional hearing which went viral.
And specifically, New York Republican Elise Stefanik, who was a Harvard alum, was one of the main questioners of a panel consisting of president of UPenn, president of MIT, president of Harvard, all women. And the key point was, at some point, Stefanik said, is genocide. The advocacy of genocide, the widespread hatred of jews allowable under the free speech codes of your universities. And they all dissembled embarrassingly, so they would not say outright that it was against policy. Now, you could have a policy that says anything goes, but none of those schools have a policy that says anything goes on free speech. So this was more an issue of hypocrisy.
You will kick off students who know, vote for Donald Trump on the sidewalk, you'll kick them out, but not people marching around saying, kill the Jews, from the river to the sea, Palestine antifata forever.
If you know the history of any of those charges, they are for genocide. Anyway, the reason I'm talking about this tonight is it led to a very interesting and actually quite rare, if you know the history, revolt by rich people.
It led to a revolt by rich, mostly jewish, but I don't want to cast it that way. But investors, businessmen, hedge fund managers who said, this is terrible, and I'm not going to fund my alma mater anymore. So those who want to look up the names, the most prominent, and I really tout them as heroes. Bill Ackman of Pershing Square capital. Bill Ackman went to Harvard in 88. Now he's younger than I am. I went to Bowden in 1981, went to grad school in 88, and he has made a fortune and he went to Harvard. And he's been kind of the head of this vocally, intellectually, and others have joined him. Here's another one, much older than Bill. Leon Copperman. Leon Cooperman went to Columbia. Leon Cooperman made a fortune on Wall Street. Leon Cooperman came out and said, not giving a dime to Columbia anymore. This is outrageous. Once they looked into Columbia's anti semitism, Upenn, a number of people from UPenn, John Huntsman, Ronald Louder of S. D. Louder, Cliff Asness, who has been a friend to the Atlas Society, all came out and said, made statements and defunded or pledged to defund. So a combination of talk and walk. EloN Musk, not really sure where Elon went to university, but Elon Musk has been a good voice against DEi and campus anti semitism. Dei meaning diversity, equity and inclusion, which in the acronym world today means the opposite of what they stand for. Mark Rowan, multi billionaire at Apollo Asset Management, also has been very vocal. So look him up. R-O-W-A-N. Very interesting story. David Maggerman, who's a tech billionaire now, by the way, just as an aside, in the past, when overtly pro capitalist philanthropists and business people have weighed in with large donations to either think tanks or universities or university programs, they've been universally smeared. And so this topic is important because the left knows that the reputation of the universities, the reputation of the think tanks, the possibility that there might be a turn, that there might be a historical, philosophic, philanthropic turn toward a kind of awakening, if you will, to woke universities, an awakening by donors who are saying, maybe we shouldn't give blindly and nostalgically.
In the past, the Koch brothers, who gave money to the Cato Foundation, Cato Institute in elsewhere, John Allison, president of BB and T Corporation, who set up upwards of 50 pro capitalist programs at universities.
Two cases, there are others, but two famous cases, rare cases, of pro capitalist business people putting their money where their mouth is and they were reviled and hated. So this protest, if you will, this reaction since October 7, you could say, is in that vein, but it's not as principled and not as pro capitalist as the Koch brothers and John Allison, were. These people, courageous as they are when you think about it, are largely jewish and hate anti semitism?
Good. That's good. They're not self loathing.
And to that level, we have to ask the following.
And here's an opportunity, by the way, in asking these questions. Is this just anti my university's response to October 7, which might be like moral relativism or moral equivalence? We see that going on. Or is it broader? I'm against my university's antisemitism. That's broader than just the incident of October 7. But then you could go further. Allah, Kelly and me. I'm really against my university's anti capitalism and then broadening it even further. Oh my gosh. My alma martyr is actually anti western Sieve. It's actually antireason. You see now how I'm going from journalistic details not to diminish what happened on October 7, but an event October 7 atrociously interpreted by university presidents, and to anti semitism, which is broader, to anti capitalism, which is still broader, to anti western Silv, which is broader, Siv, which is broader still, and the reason I think this is interesting is all of these people two years ago could have said, I'm defunding my alma mater. Why? Because it's anti semitic. Because it was before October 7, and it's anti capitalist. And I'm a capitalist and it's against me. I have nostalgia for the place, but I have to admit that it's teaching ideas, whole generations, ideas that are antithetical to my existence, antithetical to my happiness.
I'm not going to defund that anymore. And anti capitalism.
But on that measure, these universities have been anti capitalist and anti western Civ for a long time.
I want to quote something that Ein Rand said. Ein Rand, who we're trying to promote at the Atlas Society. Very profound, a very prophetic statement in 1981, last speech he ever gave publicly called the sanction of the victim. And by the way, if any of you were there, you'd be older. But Jim Blanchard's group, it was a bunch of gold bugs and investment advisors, free market investment advisors, a lot of them very wealthy. She's at New Orleans and she says the following, among many things, in the sanction of the victim, quote, millions of dollars are being donated to universities by big business enterprises every year. But the donors have no idea what their money is being spent on or who it's supporting. What is certain, though, is only the fact that some of the worst antibusiness, anti capitalist propaganda has been financed by businessmen in such projects. Now listen to this philosophic point she makes. Money is a great power because in a free, or even in a semi free society, it's a frozen form of productive energy. And the spending of money is a grave responsibility.
Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of so called academic freedom, it's a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree, ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It's a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers. Yet that's what businessmen are doing with such reckless irresponsibility, unquote. Now, had any of the current protesters, if you will, the calls for defunding, heard this talk, I wonder what they would have said, because she said that 40 years ago, and in the ensuing 40 years, yeah, 42 years, lots of money, billions and billions of money has been spent on universities who've taught well. What do we know them today by the acronyms? CRT, DEI, ESG.
All basically anti capitalist, anti sieve, postmodernist, anti objectivity crusades at the universities and funders blindly funding it all.
A couple of more points. That I want to make. One of the problems is that alums, I alluded to this earlier, but we need to think about this. And by the way, this isn't just billionaires. It could be someone who gives $100 to their alma mater. Alms tend to give to their alma maters reflexively, nostalgically, meaning emotionally. Not always rationally, not always selfishly. But now, here's a paradox. Because in the field of philanthropy, you're not supposed to do it selfishly.
You understand? That's what philanthropy, unfortunately, has been contorted and infected to become. By the way, the etymology. Very nice. We should reclaim the world. Word philanthropy means love of humans.
That's what it means now. It shouldn't mean, collectively, love of humanity, although that's okay. The concretization, of course, of is love of humans, that we know, actual humans, what we might call significant others. Why are they significant? Because they're rationally, selfishly valuable to us. And your alma mater has to be there that way, too. Your romantic partner has to be that way. Your business partners have to be that way. Your friends have to be that way. Love is not selfless, as is taught in some religions. In the objectivist philosophy, it's selfish. So this is a problem that has to be overcome. More like philosophically. But it definitely explains why some very rich people give to their alma maters. But another one is this give back to the community idea. Give back to the community? Suggesting what? That they've somehow taken something, that they somehow owe restitution? And by the way, this would mean the richer they are. If they accept this false premise, the guiltier they'll feel and the bigger the checks they will write. It's so sad because if you told them you haven't taken anything, you've earned your wealth. You're not a criminal. You're not Bernie Madoff. You're Bill Ackman. You're Leon Kuferman. You're Elon Musk. You're Mark Rowan.
You're the Koch brothers. You're John Allison. You've earned your money, and now you are concerned about spending it not on your enemies, but on your allies.
Okay, by the way, just for the record, the Harvard, UPenn, and MIT professors who appeared December 5 before Congress, Claudine Gay from Harvard, who has since resigned. Liz McGill at UPenn, who has since resigned MIT. Sally Kornbluth has not resigned, but for a separate session. I'll leave aside the reasons their performance was so bad and the reasons they were fired, but also, in the case of Harvard, at least, even though they hired, basically asked gay to leave and she had plagiarism problems. There's a subsequent issue of who are the board of trustees at Harvard and why are they still there if they allowed this kind of fraud to go on? But Stephen Hicks and I, my colleague at Atlas Society, have pledged to do a mutual, a discussion of that later. So I'm going to stick to the funding aspect. By the way, I think I have a unique perspective on this because I spent 1981 to roughly 2005 in business in Wall street, in finance, and that's where these donors obviously come from. And I learned very early on, somewhat to my surprise, that the marxist myth was actually a myth, that he had the view that if you're rich, you're going to be pro capitalist. If you're poor, you're going to be a socialist ready to eat the rich. When I went to Wall Street, I found they were all Democrats and all left leaning anti capitalists. And it was a puzzle because they were rich. And so they were either taught that they didn't earn their wealth. Well, that's John Rawls at Harvard. Right? John Rawls wrote a theory of justice that says, nobody deserves any of that.
So that would certainly dispossess you, philosophically of your wealth. So that's one thing I learned, which is very interesting. And by the way, recently documented in an article, an academic article called polarization of the rich, the new democratic allegiance of affluent Americans, documenting that rich people more likely support, quote, Democrats and anti capitalist causes than pro capitalist causes. So wonderful as these protesters are, the Ackmans, Coopermans, Musk, Rowans and others, they are still a minority, but that's okay. It's still a minority, but they're very vocal and they're very articulate, which is good. So we should be, I think, encouraged by this. So that's one context I wanted to set. The other context I wanted to set, which might seem unrelated, but I think is just the other side of the coin. I did a clubhouse recently on effective altruism, the movement that said people should go and make a bunch of money, unlike Mother Teresa, who would go serve the poor out of poverty. Now, the argument from singer and McCaskill professors was, no, go make a fortune and then give 90% of it away to the poor.
If you know effective altruism was practiced by Sam Bankman Fried, the fraud who stole $8 billion through FTX, the cyber currency. Bernie Madoff, if you know that part of his fraud was a fraud through jewish philanthropy. So he posed as a jewish philanthropist, invest in my fund. Give me money. Because some of it will be diverted to jewish philanthropy. And of course he stole billions as well. Or think of BLM, another fraud in the sense of black lives Matter. Remember the 2020 riots? But it was subsequently learned that BLM was just a fake front for a bunch of Marxists who nonetheless received $80 million from rich people and corporations in 2020 and then stole it all.
Unbelievable. So it is interesting that if you whitewash your scheme with the patina of Ulshrus, I'm not in it for me. I'm serving others. Look how philanthropic I am. Give me your billions.
It's amazing how repeatedly this went all the way back to Ponzi, by the way, repeatedly how people fall for this.
Another related point. There have been many cases where capitalists have established foundations at their death. And then they were hijacked. The foundations were hijacked by anti capitalists. So many of them still exist. So Rockefeller, who made a fortune in oil refining. Carnegie, who made a fortune in steel making. Henry Ford, who made a fortune in car making. We have to this day, the Rockefeller foundation, the Carnegie foundation, the Ford foundation, acts of philanthropy, right? But very soon after they were established, taken over by those who were anti capitalist. And the monies and the fortunes from those were used to fund anti capitalist causes. Terrible.
One last thing, by the way, a couple of things more. It is interesting that the protesting has been met with, as you might expect, and I actually, being in academia, understand this calls for academic freedom and free speech. That donors should not be telling recipients what to teach, what to preach, what to say.
This is a very effective gimmick in the sense of you just pay and otherwise shut up.
If you can get someone to give you money under those contacts, what a racket. And I don't know if people know the origins of academic freedom or calls for academic freedom. I'm in academia now. Part of my unique perspective. Having been in business and then in academia, I know both sides of this story, the donors as well as the recipients. At the turn of the century, of the last century, during the progressive era, the universities were getting huge donations from rich, what they called Robert Barons.
And they said, oh, okay, this is all very good, but we don't want to preach pro capitalism. So we're going to start a movement called academic freedom, which tells the donors, just write the checks and otherwise shut up.
And that has basically been the model for 100 years.
And it's amazing. And ein ran, as I said, pointed out in 1981, this is a racket. This must stop. Don't do this anymore. Realize what you're funding.
I don't know if you know, but polls are taken all the time of the proclivities of professors in stem, in the social sciences, in the humanities, and the ratio. It's not a perfect measure, but you go and look at the registration roles, Democrat, Republican. Again, if it was a rough measure of leaning toward liberty and capitalism versus being anti even in STEM professorships, this is all universities. They teach engineering, math, physics, chemistry. Even there, it's six to one, Democrats or Republicans. It's amazing. So if you go into a department, there's seven professors, six of them will be Democrats. But in social sciences, it's 15 to one.
You go into a polysi, or if there are 16 professors, 15 of them are Democrats. And in sociology, it's 70 to one or something.
So Harvard has been ranked last in a recent poll, ranked last on free speech on campus. So it's kind of rich for Harvard to say, leave us alone, Ackman and others stop telling us what to say, because we have free speech. No, you don't, actually, they don't allow free speech much at Harvard.
I'll stop after a couple of more uplifting observations.
One of the great things out of the Harvard Crimson, Lacey, and you can imagine they're all anti acmen and anti intervention at all of any kind by the donors. Tell them to shut up. There is an interesting one recently from Harry Lewis, who's a professor, but he's a professor of computer science, so I'm not sure a professor in social sciences would say this. He's Mretus, so he's retired. That's another reason he can speak freely, I suppose. But he wrote in the Harvard Crimson recently, this is just January eigth. You might want to look this up, reaping what we have taught.
And he says, why has antisemitism been a problem at Harvard and other universities? It's still one of the unanswered questions that has precipitated the university's downward spiral. Wow. All this brainiac power at the universities, and they can't answer the question, why are we so anti semitic? He could have gone deeper here and said, why are we so anti capitalist? Capitalism being the premier habitat for Humanity? How can we be so inhumane as to smear this system? But it's interesting, he says, if you look at the Harvard online, I'm quoting here from the essay, if you look at the Harvard online course catalog, it has a search box. Type in decolonize. And that word shows up in seven courses and the descriptions of 18 more courses. And if you try and search by oppression, 80 courses, social justice, 100 courses, white supremacy, many more intersectionality. He goes on.
Now, anyone unretired from Harvard could have said that, but they probably wouldn't got in trouble for revealing it. On an up note, I want to end with this. Ayn Rand's quote, remember, about millions of dollars of being donated by universities. She said at the time in that speech, no one has really researched this. No one has only put numbers to how much money is spent on university. Forget endowments and other things and lining that up with what are these universities teaching? But I must report, because it is interesting and maybe partly influenced by InRan, that in 1984, the Capital Research center in Washington, DC was founded. And it started just investigating, reporting and documenting university funding for purposes of informing donors, for purposes of telling business and alum how their money was being used.
So that was like the beginning of what Ein Rand was kind of calling for. And in 1991, the philanthropy Roundtable was founded. Now, there's many philanthropic groups, but this one particularly was free market, pro capitalist, pro western oriented. And so it did the same thing, it says on its website still today, it's for a free and flourishing society. And it did the same kind of thing. It was trying to document and or guide givers, donors. So that's a good thing. You start with just documenting the facts and advising people. That's the beginning of this movement, I think, which is very good. Now here's another one. In 1997, a pro West Western Civ, a pro capitalist American Council of trustees and alumni, or ACTA, if you look it up, ACta, who has for years, this is since 97, when it was called, I think it was called politically correct attitudes. Now it's called woke. They were opposing it even then, and for academic freedom and for academic diversity and diversity of opinion and things like that. So that was 1997.
In 1999, donors Trust, I'm giving you this to give you things you can look up and help. Donors Trust was established in 1999. That's a donor advised fund that kind of safeguards the intent of donors. So in other words, instead of blindly writing a check to your alma mater, you send the money to donors trust and they make sure it goes to the universities or to your cause for pro liberty, pro american, pro capitalist reasons.
In the last one, I'll suggest to you 2002, if you're giving money, charity navigator. Charity navigator. Now, charity Navigator doesn't have an ideological bias one way or another. But it's a searchable online database that you can look at the metrics. These all come from tax filings, because they're tax exempt. So you can look at things like, how does the CEO of the charity, how much they get paid, what money is spent on fundraising versus the mission, things like, you know, I do want to say, being at the Atlas Society, you really must think of giving to the Atlas Society. It ranks very high in all these areas, and all these four or five groups ranks very high in terms of not only being truly and authentically pro objectivist, pro objectivity, pro capitalist, pro reason, but it's managed in such a way that it really is very careful with donors money and very respectful of donors money, and a lot of bang for the buck, as he used to say. I want to leave with the idea, which I began with, which is to broaden this out a bit, not be so journalistic about it. We really do need, and I'm working on this project with another philanthropist about this, an objectivist philanthropist about a new conception of philanthropy, which eschews the altruist, charity based, need based, guilt based approach to giving and pertains more to what I call selfish giving, guiltless giving. And it entails very interesting virtues, like generosity, and then the recipients feeling gratitude. These generosity and gratitude are not Ayn Rand's top seven virtues, but there's no reason to believe she wouldn't have endorsed them. And they're very interesting, and they're very relevant to philanthropy. But we have to enter this field as advocates of reason and capitalism. It shouldn't be a field left to the altruists who make the producers feel guilty. And so there's an upbeat kind of aspect to that here, too. And I think these recent protests by Bill Ackman, Leon Cooperman, and others are a wonderful, really wonderful, might be one of the few opportunities in our remaining lifetime to seize the day and take this know, inform them, get into the debate and tell them, listen, this is more than just hamas.
This is more than just anti semitism. This is also anti capitalism, and this is also anti Siv. So you need to be positive about not just defunding corrupt universities, but funding pristine, authentic, wonderful workers and thinkers that exist at places like the Atlas society. So I'll stop there.
I went a little over, but, yeah, great stuff.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: We do have Atlas society founder David Kelly with us, just as he's unmuting himself.
You talked about the people that wanted you to donate and not say anything. I mean, that comes up in Atlas shrugged with Hank and his brother at.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: The very beginning, it does. And at some point is this Philip? Philip says, please give money to my do gooder cause.
And Hank Braden starts writing out a check. And I think Philip says, can you do it in cash? Because I don't want it reported that you were a yes. Yeah. And by the way, in the sermon on the mount, for those who know their sermon on the mount, there is a section there where he says, when you give to charity, it must be, must be anonymous, because if you give with your name, it's selfish. I'm paraphrasing a little bit.
And by the way, this relates to another phenomenon we see, and some might misinterpret this. There are naming rights at universities.
The most famous case in April of 2023 is Ken Griffin, who's a Republican. I don't know how pro capitalist he is, but Ken Griffin made a fortune with Citadel, which is a hedge fund, a perfectly reputable guy and earned his money, gave $300 million to Harvard. This is all before the recent controversies. And they renamed the undergraduate school the Griffin School. Now, this happens all the time. As you know, Duke University, where I teach. I mean, Duke was named because 100 years ago, the Duke tobacco family gave a fortune to what was called at the time Trinity College, and they renamed it Duke. I think students at Duke to this day don't know it was created by cigarette money.
But nonetheless, what's interesting about this, though, is just because they give them naming, they put their names on buildings and things does not mean they allow the donors to have any say in the curriculum. And of course, that's the key thing, not having your name on a building but, say, endowing a chair in free enterprise or endowing a center for capitalism, that they will very much resist because of the ideological slant of the university.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: David.
[00:34:15] Speaker C: Hi, Scott. Hi, Richard. Can you hear me?
[00:34:19] Speaker B: I can. David, hi. How are you doing?
[00:34:20] Speaker C: I'm great, thanks as always, Richard. That was just a first rate talk and very informative.
I have one small thank you, by.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: The way, David, I have to say thank you so much for your new year's best.
And I finally saw it today. How terrible is that? It's January 18. I'm so behind on emails, and I saw this wonderful, like, happy new year, Richard, and I feel badly that I didn't get back to you right away. Anyway, thank you for that. It was wonderful.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Okay. Right. And everything you're doing, you're so busy. When time clears up a little bit, let's talk. But I wanted to just make one small point about what you were saying earlier about philanthropy as love of man.
And of course, the concept of love for an objectivist is selfish. I mean, it's based on the value that we get from other people, and that value comes normally from specific others, lovers, friends, colleagues, and so forth. But I think it can be understood in a broader sense in what Ren called, what's called man worship. Just a positive attitude toward human life and human capacity and human achievement is something that you don't have to know people, but you can still be grateful for all the incredible people who've done things that have affected your life, whether you know them or not.
That's a small refinement. But I also wanted to say that this project you're working on with a donor sounds a lot like benevolence, which I consider to be a major virtue in objectivism. Generosity is a key part of that. So I'm all in favor, and I'm eager to hear more about it when you're ready.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yes, thank you for that, because I'll need your help and guidance on that. But it is interesting me that this pushback on, and I think it's actually similar to the pushback, not entirely sure about this, but the pushback that Ein Rand got for referring to and defending selfishness, which he addresses in the very opening of the virtue of selfishness. People ask me, why are you using that word everybody? The connotation of it is so nasty and so ugly. And I think equally with capitalism.
Capitalism, the unknown ideal, the title of her book, and same thing that people would say, oh my God, capitalism has this marxist connotation of exploitation, everything. Can't you just use another word that has less electricity in it? Something like free enterprise?
And I wonder if the same thing is true. I have found this, and now I'm talking about among objectivist donors, they'll say, I don't want to call it philanthropy. And I say to them, why? It's love of humans. It's love of humanity. It's humanism. That's our view. Humanism in the sense of the well being of humans. But let's make it more particular.
Humans, we're not giving to all of humanity because we distinguish know virtuous and vicious humans. And so it's okay to say I'm a philanthropist, but this is very, as you know, David, this is very new in objectivism, the idea of what does philanthropy mean? Why should I be giving?
Why should I be giving? Even within objectivism, why should I be giving to this objectivist group versus that other objectivist group, I don't want to get into that right now, but there's an uncomfortableness. I wonder what you think of this, even in capitalist circles, about it's too selfish for me to give to my university only if they endorse my views or know only if they're pro capitalist or not. They're very reluctant to go there.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: Well, a quick answer, Richard, is know, in years of talking with donors to the Allen society, I've always made it know I hope you don't consider this a sacrifice. We certainly don't. We consider it an.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Investment.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: An investment, exactly. And what I hear a lot from founders, and most clearly, I think from the chairman of our board, Jay le Pear, is I consider it a trade that I got so much from objectivism and I can afford to, and part of what I get from it, I'd like to see the world be more informed by it. And I'm running a business. I can't provide great videos or anything or wisdom to young people, but you guys can. That's what you do. And so you're doing something that I would do if I could, but it's a division of labor and in that sense a trade. So I think that's the attitude that probably many donors, at least to us, take because they're objective, they understand the difference between altruism and trading.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: Yes. And if you say investment to someone, I mean, to the investor world, an investment has a return, right?
It pays dividends. And so it's incumbent upon the good recipients to say, here's what you're going to get for your money. We're going to treat your money well, and you're not giving this for assuasing your guilt. In which case, or the feel good aspect, oh, I gave 300 million to Harvard, I feel good. Goodbye. I don't care what they do with it.
That is not a really proper motive. No active engagement and involvement. Where is my money going? How is it being used? Is it being used to advance the good values that made my career? I totally. By the way, we know David also, just to advertise for those who don't know, in the new intellectual, the opening essay, Aynran has wonderful thoughts about the relationship between intellectuals and wealthy people, between intellectuals and businessmen. And she know they seem to distrust each other, and yet if they were unified in such a way, it would be such a powerful thing. And that's also relevant. That's 1961. By 1981, her last speech, she's talking about somewhat the same theme that business people and intellectuals should not be enemies, but allies. But to be allies, you really do have to judge. Right. You can't give blindly.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: Right.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: It's funny because in their own business, David, they never became billionaires by investing blindly. They never became billionaires by hiring know, who cares whether I hired an embezzler or not? Who cares whether I hired a fake or not?
And yet when they give money blindly to their universities, they are in often cases funding really bad stuff that they would never fund in their own businesses. So it's a kind of schizophrenia that we should reject.
[00:42:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll just say not to drug that too much, but our donors tend to be not subject to that fallacy.
Over all these years of my involvement, I'm super aware that we know competing for their investment dollars and we've got to show results, and, you know, that it's.
And that's healthy. I like that.
Ed Crane once who founded Cato, or was the longtime CEO of Cato, said he didn't want to have an endowment.
And that's an option that you could take or not take. But his argument was, I want to have to earn my living every day, every year.
And they did, and that's what we've been trying to do. So it is a win win situation.
[00:43:10] Speaker B: That's interesting also, because the other trend we've noticed, David, is, and now this is within the objectivist community. So this is a sliver within a sliver within a sliver of philanthropy where people will say, I'm not going to write you. I love your organization, I love what you're doing, and this is true of all, but I'm not going to write you a blank check.
I have a project in mind. I have a particular. And you may not like this project, but I'll give you money if you do the project.
And those I think, are interesting because whether we accept it or not, it's still on the part of the giver. A very self oriented approach.
This is important to them. They love this aspect of it. And I have seen cases in the past where pro capitalists, pro objectivists will give blank checks to organizations and then regret it later, and then they'll shift to a model that says, I'm doing project finance. Yeah. In other words, submit ideas to me and I'll have a group of people who will assess it and decide whether to fund it or not. So it's still funding, but it's like rationally judging the funding requests. So anyway, just for thought, other non objectivists can do that as well. Of course they can say, I'll give you money, Harvard. Do you have any pro capitalist professors?
Do you have any pro reason, pro objectity philosophy? Know, and of course you know, David, here's the thing, which I didn't really mention. Wouldn't you say, David, that they're not really motivated by that? In other words, is it too far to say that the Harvard endowment, which I think is 50 billion, if the Harvard trustees knew that the endowment would shrink by half, wouldn't they still not accept money? If the givers were saying, please give me some pro capitalist professors or courses, I think they would allow it to shrink. Is that too pessimistic?
[00:45:12] Speaker C: Hard to tell, but it's quite plausible. What you're saying is quite plausible.
During the pandemic and long before that, the financial cris of eight and nine, I know that colleges and universities took a financial hit and declining stock portfolios and declining giving from newly relatively impoverished donors, and they didn't change anything that I know of about regarding the content of what they taught.
For that reason, I tend to agree with you.
Ideology is deeper than money. Yeah.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: And these endowments are so huge. I mean, from the standpoint of the professors, I don't think they really care whether the endowment is 50,000,000,040, 20, or ten. Their view is, I'm teaching Marxism no matter what. If you tap me on the shoulder one day and say, I've lost my job, okay, maybe. But by the way, Scott, the other reason I laid out this idea of is, are the protests concretely Hamas related or broadly anti semitism or broadly anti cavity? I think this will determine how long this lasts, because if it's expanded out into a broader critique of the universities being anti western, Sieve, it would last longer. But if it's just a matter of we don't really like their reaction to the Hamas war, I mean, that'll be over in a couple of years, and we'll be back to normality. So what I'm hoping is, even if they think of it as only October 7 related or anti semitism related, I'm hoping we can open it up to them and approach them and try to convince them that this is a broader problem than just anti semitism. This is anti capitalism, and then this is, you know, deeper and deeper. You see what I mean?
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Well, Bill Ackman, I've been following him, and he tweeted something similar, saying, this is deeper than anti semitism. It's about.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: And realizing that it's not. Just know innocuous as it sounds, yes.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: And in that regard, I would say, I think Stephen Hicks would agree with me, my colleague here, that a critique of Dei amounts to a critique of postmodernism, and that is more philosophical. Yeah, but they would also have to come up with a case for, you guys need to be teaching reason, objectivity, individualism, capitalism. So that positive argument versus stop teaching the opposite of all those.
It's a different stance. Right. But at least we can be grateful that at this point they're saying, stop teaching garbage. Stop teaching poison. And then the question is, what is nutrition? What is intellectual nutrition? That's where the Atlas society and others come in and say, we have nutrition. They're teaching love. By the way, I love the phrase poison ivy. The poison Ivy League has become a kind of meme, and I think it's a little unfair. But it's so interesting because the Ivy League. David's from Brown. I'm not Ivy League. David went to Brown and Princeton, and so he knows Ivy League better than I do. But one of the things I love about Ivy League is they earned, over many years, they earned their reputation, and it takes a long time to erode such a reputation. And I'm not happy to see the reputation of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and others erode, but I also don't want them to get away with murder. So I don't know your views on that, David, but the Ivy League is very important in terms of who we influence. And so the fact that these donors, when you think about it, these donors are not talking about Indiana state or they're. They are alums of Yale, Columbia, Upenn. And so it makes it all the more interesting, because I think you and I know that's where the action is.
[00:49:46] Speaker C: I would agree.
Although I think in today's academic universe, the Ivy League has always had a special case, and I hadn't heard that word, poison Ivy League. I love that.
But they're also.
UCLA, Berkeley, University of Michigan are among other big. MIT, other big.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: Stanford. Stanford.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: Stanford, of course. Yeah. Other huge players at the top of the ranks academically. And I haven't followed where each of them stands. It is interesting that Upenn, which is not Ivy League. No, it is, I guess.
And MIT and Harvard all got called up and were shamed by their reaction to October 7. I'm not sure Congress had any business doing that, except to the extent that they fund the colleges.
To an extent, yes.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: That's not a point I covered. But people should know that there are congressional, not only insight and critique of this, but discussions of defunding, but some of them don't want to. Even Republicans, they don't want to defund the universities, just want to control what they're saying. And it's very dangerous.
I'm in academia. I want academic freedom. And I would prefer that this lead to, if it can, Congress saying we need to stop funding universities, then the answer should not be, let's fund them and then tell them what to say. And there's a group that there's very little in the Congress that's willing to say, defund the whole thing. So just as billionaire financiers are rightly saying, I think I'm going to defund my alma mater, I think Congress should as well. I don't think the alternative should be we'll fund you, but tell you what to say and start censoring you.
That I think is terrible. And that is something the universities are, of course, citing to their favor, to their benefit. They're saying Congress can't tell us what to say in our curriculum and syllaba. And then you say to Harvard, yeah, but you got $500 million from the american taxpayers last year. Oh, are you willing to forego that? No, especially the medical schools. There have been studies showing that the medical schools, Harvard and all the medical schools got so much money from the government that they towed the line on CDC and masking and Covid and so on that score. They were told to be illiberal. And if they weren't giving illiberal advice about shutdowns and masking and distancing, that they would lose their funding. So it goes both ways. As long as the government is funding something, as long as they pay the piper, they're going to dictate the tune. We should be fighting against that, too. And I mean, there's so many funds to fight here.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: There's an ideology being pushed already. But I want to ask, the time we have left, does it seem like the donors are still hesitant to say goodbye forever or making an ultimatum? But they're talking more about pauses and donations.
Are they just sending a warning shot across the bow? And they like the social setup they have with these.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: There's. Yes, I think, Scott, there's something to that, that the alumni office is thinking, wow, this is a shit storm, but this too shall pass. And they'll come back to us and they'll want their name on the doors and they'll want their name on the football stadium and let's just weather the storm.
But I don't want to be that negative about it. I think this is unprecedented since Ein Rand said in 1981, don't do this. Stop doing this. I don't think I've ever seen. David, you and I are think the oldest ones in the room. I don't think I've ever seen a bunch of rich people standing up saying, I'm not going to give you my money if you're so anti me. Now, the issue here, though, is anti me is I'm jewish and you're anti me.
I don't know why they didn't know. The universities have been anti semic for a long time, but will they get to the point where they'll say, oh my God, you're also anti capitalist. And that's me. I'm a capitalist, I'm a financier, and I love free markets. You know what I mean? Is like a bridge too far, David.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: Well, no, I mean, in years as an activist of trying to communicate ideas, being a philosopher, I tend to communicate at a pretty abstract level. But one thing I've noticed is that most people don't function at that level. And what galvanizes thing is some concrete. And I think this is a really striking concrete. The October 7, the Rohamas demonstrations at Harvard and elsewhere. And once you have that, you can build on it, and we will do so. But others are doing it, too, which is really encouraging.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Yes. And I think in the past, it's not as if there haven't been recognitions that they're like crazy students on campus. Okay, whatever. In this group or that group, I think the reason those congressional hearings, and I'm like you, David, I don't really want Congress involved. But I think one of the reasons that December 5 hearing was so important is the country saw presidents of universities, not some student group. They saw the presidents of three major universities unable to denounce genocide of jews. And I think that there may be anti semitism in the United States, but I think that shocked the hell out of people. Yeah. I think people are thinking, what if it got to the top? Then it must be institutional. It's not just some random student group. I mean, even at Harvard, there were like 31 student groups marching in defense of Hamas. So I think that's interesting, too. And that might have influenced these rich givers as well, because they saw, oh my God, that's my university president, and she's terrible. And then if you go further and say, as Elon Musk has done, they're in those positions because of Dei.
They're in those positions not by merit. Or dessert. But because of skin color or gender or things like that.
Then it segues into a Dei critique and debate. Right, David? And that's more philosophical.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: I think that's what Ackman was realizing as well.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: Yes, right.
[00:56:53] Speaker A: One thing, they even went after his wife. And tried know say that she was plagiarizing. Because she didn't give attribution in every case. Even where she mentioned the author and other parts of the paper.
Can we expect these billionaires to face investigation? Are they going to try to cancel them as a result of this?
[00:57:14] Speaker B: No, I think certainly. Yes, I think certainly. But what do they call it? Fu money. Some of these people are so wealthy, it would be nice to get to the point where we had fu money. Where you could say anything you want and say to people, I don't care, because you're not going to cancel me. It's not going to matter. And Elon Musk is like that. Ackman's like that. It is kind of nice. It's nice to have the rich, finally capitalists, in what I call capitalists in a financial sense, becoming at least somewhat capitalist ideologically. Because the two have not always gone together. And again, remember, the marxist view was, if you're in a capitalist dollar sign, you own the means of production. You're going to be pro capitalism. The system. That's just not true. So what's significant about this phenomenon is capitalists financially are moving in the direction of saying, why are you so anti capitalist ideologically? They're not quite there yet. But the recognition that there's anti semitism and maybe anti. And the Dei thing. We have a wonderful opportunity to move them in the direction of realizing that the universities are anti capitalist and therefore anti semitic. And therefore, you know what I mean? And then the next really big step is don't just defund these corrupt institutions. Fund morally authentic, real good institutions. And then there's like, the Atlas Society. I mean, a sliver of the check that Ackman writes to Harvard. That he's not going to write anymore. A sliver of that check that went to the Atlas Society would do enormous benefit. But I'm not even sure he knows of the Atlas Society. So that's the kind of power and significance of what's happening here. A mere minor fractional diversion of the money away from corruption, toward morality, toward authentic idea groups like the Atlas Society. Could have an enormous leverage on the future of western sieve.
[00:59:28] Speaker A: That's a great note to end it on. People can actually donate atlassociety.org donate. And Richard, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, David, thanks for joining as well. Thanks to everyone who participated or just listened, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.
[00:59:49] Speaker B: Thank you all. Thanks, Scott. Thank you.
[00:59:50] Speaker C: Thank you, everyone.
