It was quite a week in New York philanthropy: a $60 million gift to SUNY Stony Brook from James and Marilyn Simons, a $50 million gift to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College from Ronald Perelman, and a $20 million gift to The Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University from John and Pat Klingenstein. Mr. Simons is a hedge fund manager known for the “quant” techniques that took such a beating recently on Wall Street, while Mr. Perelman is a financier who has been vilified almost as often as he has been married. Mr. Klingenstein was a partner in the investment bank Wertheim & Co. and a member of the family that built that firm. Capitalism has plenty of virtues beyond philanthropy, but in an age when the wealthy are often set down as those who need to be taxed more, it is a small point worth mentioning that no system generates fortunes or allocates them better than capitalism.

At a moment when Columbia University is in the midst of a $4 billion capital campaign and Weill Cornell is in the midst of a $1.3 billion capital campaign, New York institutions are raising the bar in fundraising as they are in research. Let us just say that it is not a coincidence that the capital of capitalism is emerging, too, as a capital of giving. For those who care about our colleges and universities and our hospitals and medical schools, the explosive wealth creation in recent decades is a trend to celebrate rather than one to bemoan.