My Little Hundred Million | Revisionist History | Malcolm Gladwell

In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan’s example?

“My Little Hundred Million” is the third part of Revisionist History’s educational miniseries. It looks at the hidden ideologies behind giving and how a strange set of ideas has hijacked educational philanthropy.

Season 1 (2016)
#podcast #revisionisthistory #malcolmgladwell

ABOUT REVISIONIST HISTORY
Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell’s journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every podcast episode re-examines something from the past — an event, a person, an idea, even a song — and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

ABOUT MALCOLM GLADWELL
Malcolm Gladwell is president and co-founder of Pushkin Industries. He is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of six New York Times bestsellers including The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and Talking to Strangers. He has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1996. He is a trustee of the Surgo Foundation and currently serves on the board of the RAND Corporation.

ABOUT PUSHKIN INDUSTRIES
Pushkin Industries is an audio production company dedicated to creating premium content in a collaborative environment. Co-founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg in 2018, Pushkin has launched seven new shows into the top 10 on Apple Podcasts (Against the Rules, The Happiness Lab, Solvable, Cautionary Tales, Deep Cover, The Last Archive, and Lost Hills), in addition to producing the hugely successful Revisionist History. Pushkin’s growing audiobook catalogue includes includes the bestselling biography “Fauci,” by Michael Specter, “Hasta La Vista, America,” Kurt Andersen’s parody Trump farewell speech performed by Alec Baldwin, "Takeover" by Noah Feldman, and “Talking to Strangers,” from Pushkin co-founder Malcolm Gladwell. Pushkin is dedicated to producing audio in any format that challenges listeners and inspires curiosity and joy.

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[webbjessie]

Omg, I love you for saying this Malcolm!! I've always felt this way. They're trying to fix the world's problems and justify the expense that way, but forget that one easy way of "fixing" world problems is to give people access to education!

[jimjackson]

The weak link strong link idea is the best idea i have heard in a while.Thanks Malcolm.

[elevatefinancial]

Thank you for sharing this story. It was extremely eye opening 🙏

[judegarcia]

You are amazing at communicating ideas so clearly. Just got this randomly on my feed and loved it. Makes so much sense. Thank you.

[williamponder]

Too much truth Malcom, most folks can't handle the truth

[sbartdbarcelona]

Excellent episode. Very thoughtful. Thx you

[cherylcarlson]

So instructive in dealing with the town and county I am living in . must rethink how I interact with them.

[EdoRiver]

Unlimited appetite.😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢 Malcolm, I’m always searching for a fresh and positive way to describe my birth culture. Im an expat in Japan for 30 years. But beneath the thin veneer of Japanese affectation, I’m basically a small town, white southerner, who was to a great degree taught, trained, but unsuccessfully, to aspire for the highest relative educational attainment . I’m currently in favor of describing my culture as probing the boundaries of fulfillment of appetite. If my grandkid were to even apply to a near, or fake Ivy League school, I would be pleased as punch. But my heart would be in the Jersey school scribe. To have the chance to turn down one for the other, that would be satisfying.

[williamclyde]

You’re really doing the argument of talent versus tinker. Or mutuality versus hierarchy. I just got provisional patent on an entire revolution in the microbiological world but I don’t have a fancy college where I got my degree. So I won’t waste my time trying to raise money I will simply bootstrap as I have always done.

[jevononeal]

Malcolm makes me proud, and is an amazing role model. Thank you for your contribution to generations younger than you, showing us how we can use our own well of knowledge to not be silent and complacent, but helpful to the generation after us. I appreciate you sir.

[jaein]

As a graduate of SJSU, a California State University (CSU), hearing Malcolm Gladwell praising UC schools....ouch.

[thierryploum]

It makes one wonder where all these billionaires come from: were they self made, starting from scratch, building up little by little to get to the top (it does not sound likely, hearing their justifications), or do they come from established wealth (which seems more probable, and yet there must be many from modest starts)?
Is it naive to imagine those who came from modest means would want to donate to those universities that nurtured them, not the ones they did not dare apply to or which refused them? This podcast seems to show that everyone, whatever their background, wants to be able to say: "I gave to Harvard" or something similar.
The almost billionaire prime minister (well, it may be that his wife has the money) of the UK talked about the great welcome his family got, or his parents, I think he said in an interview, when presumably they could have been turned away ("being poor" is the sub text). But now he wants to prevent those coming after him from being allowed the privileges his family got: "give me an opportunity and lock everybody else out who comes after me". Wow!
Favouring a hundred students instead of thousands seems to be the same.
And I find it terribly depressing, also when it seems to me (I know: what do I know!), the probability of bright or very bright students coming from the poor end of education is far far higher from the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students, then it is of the tens of thousands of students from a background of not worrying about where the money for the replacement shoes will come from.
(I listened to the podcast "Carlos doesn't remember", yesterday).
It turns out I was lucky, and even at the time I knew it when I was sent fifty years ago to an elite boarding school in Switzerland, that now costs more than entry into Harvard, or Eton in the UK.

There are a couple of brilliant videos on Youtube on Charles Steinmetz the "wizard of Schenectady" (and made by "Kathy who loves physics and history") who worked for what eventually would become General Electric. Steinmetz, who arrived from Germany in the US in 1889 as a political refugee, felt that: "the US had given him everything, but one criticism he could make is that he would far more enjoy his advantages if he knew that everybody could enjoy the same." 
I could not have said it better, if I had expressed it myself.
(Watch her videos; they are inspiring. Steinmetz was an incredible scientist!)

[johnkidd]

The reason philanthropists give money away is simple. The money would go to taxes which they have no faith the government would spend wisely. By donating it, they can specify how it is to be spent. Granted, some may do it for attention, some out of guilt, some anonymously but the bottom line is they all believe they can use the money better than the government ever could.

[didipet]

Hank Rowan was one of the last true gentlemen this world has ever known. I met him once, and not only was he impeccably dressed, he was impressively accomplished.

[SkiRedMtn]

Successful recording and screen artists should give as much to Arts schools and we might not be in the cultural black hole we currently inhabit

[shovemedia]

Gladwell is smart enough and experienced enough and well-connected enough that being surprised by any of this comes off as incredibly disingenuous. Cmon man, you know *exactly* what’s up.

[lyonellaverde]

Thinking philanthropists funnel their giving to elite academic institutions for altruistic motives is as naive as thinking people attend elite academc institutions for the education. #Connections

[kambrose]

I wonder how good Stanford can be of they can't follow this simple logic and act on it. They just seem locked in cycle of greed

[bettydean]

I liked this one too... listening to it the analogy with Mr Trump popped into my head. He says all this good things, like he is rooting for the little guy, but when he is in the back room with his millioner friends all the legislation is in favor of the big guys, so was Mr Standford. He said that all this money is for the little guy, to open a wider door for the talented little guy but its not.... how do we fall in this trap over and over?

[chocolateclaire]

Tax deductions.... did you mention tax deductions?