Malcolm Gladwell rips into Stanford University's request for donations: 'You might as well send your check to the Sultan of Brunei'

pulse

February 21, 2017 6:54 PM

In a series of tweets, Gladwell lambasted Stanford, linking to a request from the school for gifts to help support student financial aid.

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Malcolm Gladwell is taking aim at Stanford University's request for charitable donations.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, he lambasted the elite school, linking to a request from Stanford for gifts to help support student financial aid.

"Stanford has $22.4 billion in the bank, tax free," he tweeted. "You might as well send your check to the Sultan of Brunei."

Never one to mince words, the famed author has frequently excoriated charitable giving to wealthy universities.

In 2015, after the Wall Street billionaire John Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard, Gladwell similarly pounced on the news, insinuating that Paulson's money could have been put to better use. The gift from Paulson was Harvard's largest-ever gift and added to the university's mammoth $36.4 billion endowment.

"If billionaires don't step up, Harvard will soon be down to its last $30 billion," Gladwell wrote at the time.

In Gladwell's criticism on Tuesday, he pointed out that as a nonprofit institution, Stanford doesn't pay taxes on its multibillion-dollar endowment.

"Why should I send them money if I'm already subsidizing them?" he wrote.

Critics of colleges receiving money tax-free say that exemptions provided to private colleges can be thought of as American taxpayers subsidizing private-endowment funds. Basically, they say, an exemption in one area increases taxes in another area, ultimately falling on the backs of American taxpayers.

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