This week, Wall Street billionaire John Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard University. That donation earned him building naming rights with the eponymous John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
But although Harvard has a massive endowment built from many large charitable gifts, Paulson is only the fourth person in Harvard's history to have a building named after him, according to Boston.com.
That short list includes John Harvard, for which the school was named, John F. Kennedy, who had the Kennedy School of Government posthumously named in memoriam to the president, and Gerald Chan, whose $350 million donation resulted in the School of Public Health being named after his father.
Paulson's donation earned him bragging rights as the largest ever in Harvard's history. But it has also been fodder for ridicule, as the billionaire's motivations for donating are described as simply feeding his ego.
And yesterday, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell pounced on the news on Twitter, and called out Paulson sarcastically tweeting, "It came down to helping the poor or giving the world's richest university $400 mil it doesn't need. Wise choice John!"
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