U. of Arkansas’s Clinton School Returns Hsu Gift

Officials at the University of Arkansas’s Clinton School of Public Service, in Little Rock, have decided to return $75,000 that Norman Hsu, the financier who has come under fire for his questionable business practices, gave the institution last year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Mr. Hsu, a top fund raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, had pledged a total of $100,000 to the Clinton School after hearing about it last year at the annual Clinton Global Initiative, in New York, which is organized by the William J. Clinton Foundation. Mr. Hsu became a “member” of the initiative after donating the $15,000 annual donation required to attain such status.

Mr. Hsu paid two installments toward his pledge to the Clinton School before he fled a hearing on 15-year-old fraud charges in California this month. He was later arrested in Colorado.

Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School and an adviser to the Clintons, said the donation from Mr. Hsu “came out of the blue” last year.

While Senator Clinton and other politicians have pledged to return or give to charity money they have received from Mr. Hsu’s fund-raising efforts, Clinton School officials initially said the graduate program — which focuses on international aid, law, philanthropy, and politics — would keep the donation but later changed their minds.