Dear members of our university community:
Over the past weeks and months, our institution has been under unprecedented attack. Many on our campus and beyond are fearful, and are looking to us for leadership. I would like to take this opportunity to reassure each and every community member of my deep and unwavering commitment to the safety of our endowment.
To students, faculty, and staff who may be wondering, Will our endowment be called names?, the answer is no. Will our endowment be shouted at, as it sits quietly in various financial institutions? Of course not. Will our endowment face law-enforcement raids as it goes about its business, accruing further wealth? Let me be clear: No. As your president, I will physically throw myself between federal law enforcement and the New York Stock Exchange, where exchange-traded funds, including those in our endowment, are traded. Endowments, you are safe here.
I have been made aware of troubling instances in which our endowment was stopped and questioned by plainclothes officers on its way to the Monday opening of trading. This is unacceptable. I witnessed several Vietnam War protests personally in my time, and I am prepared to establish, if necessary, citizen guardians for our endowment, to check on its well-being repeatedly in the course of a twenty-four-hour period by calling our brokers to ask about the day’s distributions.
In response to these unprecedented circumstances, the university is taking unprecedented steps to combat government intimidation of our endowment. I am developing an Endowment Awareness Task Force, composed of myself, Dean Lindsey, and several student leaders, with the express purpose of starting a dialogue. We seek to fight misconceptions many people have about our endowment—for instance, that it is more than tens of billions of dollars, should be spent down during threats to American democracy, or is incapable of feeling pain. Our endowment has never participated in any protest against any cause. It has never spoken out against any politician or party. It has never spoken at all. But, if it wanted to, I would defend its right to do so with my last breath. Our endowment is a living, passively earning thing, and it deserves to thrive in a nurturing environment, as it funds in perpetuity the Gregor R. Vernon Natural Science Annex.
The current student body may not know this, but, before I joined the university administration, I was an educator myself. And, endowment, I got into teaching for you. I earned my Ph.D. in comparative literature, spending sixteen months studying stained-glass windows in the damp, airless abbey of Pérouges for you. You are the reason I got up in the morning, an old macroeconomics textbook tucked under my arm which I thought might appeal to you, you bundle of investment gifts. As I sat through observation after observation on my way to tenure, I thought of your asset allocation, and smiled. Endowment, you inspire me every time I see you struggle and then succeed, the value of your real-estate holdings rising. I care about you, endowment—not just your physical well-being but your spiritual well-being. You are the reason I used to chuckle to myself after a difficult class and say, “You know, sometimes I feel like the endowment is teaching me! ”
You, the endowment, are the lifeblood of this university. Who would we be, what would our purpose be, without our endowment? And, to all future endowments that may be considering our university, we would like to welcome you. You are our most valuable asset, except, perhaps, for our leadership’s compensation packages. ♦
