Hedge-fund king Ken Griffin has just made the largest gift to US higher education in history. Griffin is donating $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon University, with the bulk of it to build a new satellite school in Miami focused on innovation and technology.

What’s a boon for Miami’s burgeoning tech sector is a tragedy for Chicago, where Griffin built his Citadel hedge fund for 33 years before he finally said he had enough of Illinois’ punishing taxes, regulation and crime and moved to Miami in 2022.

We noted last year that tens of millions of dollars of Griffin’s charitable giving to food kitchens, homeless shelters, museums, and education traveled with him to Florida leaving local charities depleted of money.

A Chicago Tribune editorial notes “how counter-productive it was for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to feud with Griffin.”  The end result is “they helped create a very powerful competitor entirely capable of remaking Miami into a dense and livable urban core with an ample supply of highly educated workers and good restaurants and art galleries, too. This is urban re-ordering on a scale America has never seen.”

The Tribune ended its editorial by saying it hopes Griffin’s leaving will “finally inspire a long-overdue turn toward competent and limited government in Illinois and New York.”

Dare to dream.