Sure, this is a convenient way to look at this particular situation. Yet I google "strings attached donation university" and see many instances of this crap: Koch brothers, John Allison, etc. It's serious enough that Harvard recently issued a "Gift Policy Guide" discourage strings-attached giving. Ironically, only the elite private universities have enough cachet to make such a policy stick.
What other «way[s] to look at this» are there? Point of view or practical proposal, I do not get what are the other options.
But my more extreme view is that individuals should not be able to amass so many resources to begin with. It's absurd.
^1 For some time German universities had to require higher fees from students, officially to provide an improved learning experience. Seeing that universities now had an alternative income source some states cut public funding, they didn't care about the specifics, the courts did, some universities ended up not heating their buildings during winter because they couldn't legally touch the money.