Big donors: Divest from elite protest colleges
Reinvest where it matters more
Jeffrey Denny
Will billionaire donors who suspended giving to Columbia University and other elite colleges over last year’s Gaza protests return?
They shouldn’t.
They should make a smarter investment decision by giving to the thousands of peaceful colleges where less privileged, bootstrapping students scrape, borrow, scramble, work wage jobs and study hard to earn a degree, career and better life for themselves and others.
America has about 9,000 colleges and universities. Despite claims — by right wing media and the Activist Industrial Complex alike — that the protests were sweeping the nation, they occurred at only about 100 campuses, according to Campus Safety Magazine. Headlined by costly, exclusive colleges where even top high school valedictorians don’t bother applying.
Most if not all the top protest colleges already boast enormous endowments.
— #1 in the world is Harvard at $50 billion, but the victory was priceless for House Republicans, protesting students and donors who defenestrated President Claudine Gay.
— Penn, which toppled President Liz Magill over its protests last year, has $21 billion socked away.
— Cornell — where Fox News was delighted to report, “Anti-Israel protesters smash glass doors, fill Cornell University building on 1st day of fall semester … as chaos erupts” enjoys a $10 billion kitty. President Martha Pollack quit last May over the protests.
— Columbia’s $13.6 billion endowment earned an 8% trailing 10-year return. No amount of fundraising success, a key performance indicator for college presidents, could save Minouche Shafik’s job at the top. Another head on a stake for the students who disrupt and threaten other students — with zero discernable impact on Gaza.
Meanwhile, big Columbia donors such as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the Russell Berrie Foundation who balked at the protests may be shopping around for better recipients of their largesse.
Kraft said last spring he was “longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.” Barrie’s president said, “It’s a painful decision for us to have come to this point where we have to tell them, ‘There’s a disconnect between your values and ours.’”
Disgusted donors have plenty of other options.
They could create or redouble their own college scholarship funds. Sponsor a struggling high school or 1,000 poor but promising students. Ease the student debt crisis by creating an investment fund to buy up delinquent student debt like hedge funds do with “non-performing” mortgages.
Or they can take a cue from a peer: billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott. She’s making wise investments in students who really need the lift, notably at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Dubbed “Fairy Godmother,” Scott gave Spellman College $100 million, Howard University (Kamala Harris’s alma mater) $40 million, another $40 million to Morgan State, $25 million each to Alcorn State and Bowie State and $20 million to Tuskegee, among several HBCUs and dozens of smaller, modest colleges that serve lower-income, historically marginalized and underserved people. Note that most HBCUs have endowments of less than $50 million.
See Scott’s 2020 Medium story listing the colleges she supported. None are among today’s 100 protest colleges. Yet they care about humanity no less. HBCUs are famous for graduates who are committed to that very purpose.
Ivy and other elite colleges with multi-billion-dollar endowments will note that they fund aid for the less fortunate. Protestors chanting antisemitism might consider how they’re hurting donor-funded scholarship students on top of disrupting their studies, scaring Jewish classmates and winning infinitely more eyerolls and resentment than hearts and minds.
And often the scholarships are a drop in the bucket given the colleges’ shocking costs, up to $400,000 for bachelor’s in Interrogating Capitalism. And they barely open doors at colleges with 3–7% acceptance rates dominated by wealthy legacies and private school applicants with admissions-connected college counselors, consultants and entrance exam coaching.
Many billionaires get that way because they seek the optimal return on investment, including social investing.
Their wealth managers certainly focus on ROI. Anyone with a 401(k) should. Even unions do as they invest worker pension funds. Like Walter Wriston famously said, “Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.”
Surely, investing in elite students with a leg up to lead our society and institutions is a sound strategy. But investing in everyday students can produce greater returns. Giving $10 million to $13.6 billion-endowed Columbia may get your name on professorship, but for a $50 million-endowed HBCU, it’s transformative. Even giving $1 million each to 20 HBCUs makes a splash. See the White House Council of Economic Advisors’ “The Economics of HBCUs” published last May, coincidentally amid the protests.
I’m not necessarily plumping for HBCUs per se, although I’ve done some work for one and it was eye-opening.
I cite them as exemplary among the 8,900 colleges and their students who go about their purpose, teaching and learning, many in national obscurity. And yet produce leaders in all walks of life who make a difference.
Protesting is fine as far as it goes. Unless you’re disrupting someone’s education, which, from what I understand, is what college and the struggle to get in, pay for it and make the grades is really for.
And who knows? Maybe soon an HBCU grad will become the first woman of color elected President of the United States.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
