Former Harvard president Larry Summers called the program «the single most misdirected philanthropy in this decade,» according to TechCrunch, while Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg wrote in Newsweek, «Thiel fellows will have the opportunity to emulate their sponsor
by halting their intellectual development around the onset of
adulthood, maintaining a narrow - minded focus on getting rich as young as possible and thereby avoid the siren lure of helping others or pursuing knowledge for its own sake.»