The Fight Between Larry and Larry
The San Jose Mercury News reports that Larry Ellison is giving a $100 million gift to the Ellison Medical Foundation to sponsor research on aging and aging-related diseases.
Though the paper says the gift is unrelated to the $115 million Ellison allegedly promised but never paid to Harvard, it's hard to imagine that the Oracle chief executive, reported by the Wall Street Journal to be laboring under a cash crunch, is likely to make two $100 million gifts.
A source close to Ellison said Monday that Summer's shaky tenure and ultimate departure has adversely affected Ellison's decision to give the [Harvard] donation.
The Mercury News adds that the money will count toward Ellison's settlement with the federal government in an insider trading case....
From this and the other published stories on the Ellison gift, it's impossible to tell what really happened here. Was Ellison a Summers supporter who withdrew the gift in protest of Summers' ouster? Or was he just reluctant to give the money to a place—and a president—so plagued by controversy? Or did his decision not to pay the money have nothing to do with Summers, and he's just using that as an excuse?
One wonders if the flurry of news stories coming out of Harvard can't now be seen as preemptive spin—Summers making it look as if Ellison was reneging because he's not reliable, rather than the more embarrassing spectacle of Ellison deciding that he didn't want to give Summers the money.
As I say, impossible to tell from the published facts....
