May 11 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Kenneth Griffin

called on his alma mater Harvard University on Saturday to

embrace "western values", saying that the turmoil across college

campuses was the product of a "cultural revolution" in U.S.

education.

Griffin, founder of U.S. hedge fund Citadel, told the

Financial Times in an interview that the U.S. had "lost sight of

education as the means of pursuing truth and acquiring

knowledge" over the past decade.

"Harvard should put front and centre (that it) stands for

meritocracy in America...," Griffin said, adding that schools

should "embrace Western values that have built one of the

greatest nations in the world."

Griffin who has donated more than half a billion dollars to

Harvard University said in January that he has halted donations

to the school over how it handled antisemitism on campus.

"What you're seeing now is the end-product of this cultural

revolution in American education playing out on American

campuses, in particular, using the paradigm of the oppressor and

the oppressed," Griffin told the FT.

"The protests on college campuses are almost like

performative art..," he said.

Griffin's remarks come amid arrests of dozens of

pro-Palestinian activists at universities across America in the

latest crackdowns on demonstrations roiling U.S. campuses.

The protesting students are demanding a cease-fire in

Israel's incursion into Gaza and have demanded their schools

divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Since the first mass arrests at Columbia University on April

18, at least 2,600 demonstrators have been detained at more than

100 protests in 39 states and Washington, D.C., according to The

Appeal, a nonprofit news organization.

Griffin, who started trading in his Harvard dormitory, spoke

at the Managed Funds Association conference in Miami in January

about America's elite universities and criticized the education

at the universities blaming the "DEI (diversity, equity and

inclusion) agenda."