Why I’m Rescinding My $100 Million Pledge to Harvard

Greetings friends!

Having been blessed with more happiness and wealth than any one person needs, I am keen to share the bounty. My days are thus filled with answering the question “Who most needs help?”.

It was no doubt vanity that led me to think that my pledge to Harvard would do them any good. They are practically swimming in money, with an endowment sloshing over $50 billion.

Nor do they need the publicity. Although the saying goes all publicity is good publicity, I suspect quite a few people are presently questioning that adage. Many formerly prestigious Universities are lurching from one crisis to the next, no doubt wishing the roving eye of public scrutiny would look elsewhere.

In any event, public scrutiny is not the issue; their underlying conduct is. Censoring speech with one breath and claiming First Amendment purism in the next, with a noticeable ideological bias underlying the difference, is nothing to be proud of.

Why I am rescinding my pledge to Harvard

I don’t wish to inflame the culture wars further with this post. The Ivy League’s pusillanimity in the face of basic moral questions is not the reason for my rescinding my pledge.

It’s much simpler than that. Here is the main reason.*

I’ve been given to understand there’s a larger problem looming than what transpires on leafy college campuses. It seems in a few years we won’t have leafy campuses at all if we don’t address the screaming climate emergency.

Not only that but the easy solutions I blithely assumed covered the problem turn out not to be the answer. No, not even the combination of

• my fleet of Teslas,
• the super-efficient HVAC system I installed on my second beach house, and
• selflessly buying carbon offsets (gold standard offsets, I might add) as I jet around the globe visiting endangered ecosystems to show I care.

All these are not enough. I now see it will take all the world’s attention, and all the world’s money, to keep me in comfort … er, to solve the climate crisis.

From now on, my giving is going to just one place

I have re-directed all my charitable giving to the new Save our Climate with All the Money Fund, also known as the SCAM Fund.

The $100 million that Harvard would no doubt waste on demonizing merely white men can now be directed to demonizing everyone whose standard of living potentially jeopardizes mine.

I trust you agree with me that this is a much more important priority for the whole world to rally around. Make your pledge to the SCAM Fund today! The first 20 pledges of $20 million or more will be entered into a raffle for a private lunch with me.

Be well.

* Other reasons for rescinding my pledge include:

1. I never made one in the first place — wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea!
2. I only pretend to be wealthy online because it gets me past the depression when I realize my writing on Klugne is all volunteer work.
3. Naming rights for buildings have gotten so expensive! They only offered me a quad.

In the meantime, you can do your part to save our planet by subscribing. This will ensure I do not mail you a paper copy of all my articles, and avoid the felling of many lovely trees that I need to support my carbon offsets.