On Sunday, Sept. 22, the Board sent out a letter telling us that it “rejected a proposal from the Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR) for divestment of the University’s endowment from companies that supply services, equipment, or weapons to Israel.” There will of course be many opinions about the specific recommendation as it relates to Israel.

The reason given was not specific to the current case of Israel, but was rather that presumably for any and all cases, “…the endowment should not be used as a tool for political advocacy or social change.” This really surprised me and I think it’s worth examination, discussion, and eventual consensus.

I started Wesleyan in the fall of 1985 and the discussion about divestment in South Africa was constant and intense. I jumped into those conversations. But in general I found the student leadership of that movement self-righteous and uninterested in listening to other views. After a big protest that shut down North College, the President agreed to have the Board’s Finance Committee chair, fund manager, and other big-wigs meet with students. I knew nothing about finance at the time, and I found these big-wigs to be serious, well informed, and their argument compelling that it was simply impossible for Wesleyan to divest due to the way investment worked. I also felt those students present to be so shrill, belligerent, and annoying that I drifted away from the movement.

Three years after graduation, I found myself living in Southern Africa and spending time in South Africa. I talked to a number of well informed people about divestment from a perspective both of the significant impact it had had in South Africa and of the operational implementation of divestment on endowments’ fund management. I learned that what we had been told by the investment managers and board members hadn’t been correct. I guess I could say they’d lied, but it is maybe more accurate to say they confused inconvenience or difference from what they had always done with impossibility and danger. It was a real awakening for me, how wrong I had been about an issue that had dominated my Wesleyan years.

Then, as now, there has been a general vibe and pretense that those who oversee Wesleyan’s endowment know best and those who have new ideas on methods and priorities just don’t get it. But twenty years after I left Wesleyan, and over a decade before current students arrived, Wesleyan fired and sued its investment manager, a cinemagraphic crook who had been paid half a million dollars a year. How best to invest even big chunks of capital is not as clear as any given suit will pretend it is. Mistakes get made, circumstances and priorities change. There are those who lag and those who lead, but the unwavering confidence of fund managers endures. Sometimes even after they’re fired or indicted.

This clear pronouncement that Wesleyan’s billion dollar endowment will not be used as an instrument of social change is news to me and seems a bit nutty. It’s very much worth an open discussion. The first question is why? Is it because there is some odd neoliberal imperative that that it would be morally wrong to do that? I sure don’t share that view, and I bet plenty of other alumni don’t. Correct me if I am wrong, but that would mean that the Wesleyan board believes that impact or ethics or social change cannot be mixed even a little bit with revenue generation or pursuit. Really?! That sure is a different message than the one from the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Is the “we should each and all improve the world” Wesleyan brand thing just a PR message for alumni fundraising and prospective students? It isn’t really for the big important grown up stuff like our billion dollar endowment? Well, that’s sad.

Or maybe it’s unshakable confidence that if Wesleyan did use its endowment to improve the world, it would take a hit. Possibly. At least now we are talking about a testable hypothesis. But there is a very large volume of data that says capital that focuses on social change fares no worse than ethically agnostic capital, and often better. Years ago, I had this discussion with somebody I know well and so we created two different accounts, his was social change agnostic and mine completely social change focused, both overseen by the same fund manager. Sometimes his is up, sometimes mine is, but no difference over time. If this is the reason for the board’s decision, I am sure many alumni, better at finance than me, would be happy to set up a dummy endowment to test the board’s bold assertion that social change and investment can’t or shouldn’t be mixed.

The University doesn’t go out of its way to give alumni a way to enter discussions like this. We are all over the world and of different ages and eras and the University’s communication with alumni tends to be nostalgic, “everything’s fine here now,” reunion and fundraising focused. We rely on current students to inform us and to set up mechanisms to keep us informed about weighty topics like this. Even this particular earth-shaking pronouncement was not sent directly to the alumni, it was sent from the Board to the “campus community” and forwarded to us by the Vice President for Advancement. Of course alumni are never a major focus of current student activists, but you’ll all join us out here soon enough.

An alliance between students and alumni on this important question or even just an email list could really gain momentum; certainly more influence than the students of any given era on their own. The University and Board is well aware of the amnesia created by a quarter of the students cycling out each year and the difficulty that creates for institutional knowledge or the steady application of pressure on University policy.

This letter the board sent out used the word “political” four times. They used it in a way I have heard endlessly, to mean let’s not talk about this, people disagree, it’s complicated, we have real work to do, different sides, blah blah blah. That said, the board used it related to the endowment in a very different way than President Roth used it in his Sept. 2 NYT OpEd, “I’m a College President and I Hope My Campus Is Even More Political This Year.” I loved that OpEd. I read it and thought, fuck yeah! That’s the Wesleyan I know and love! But now three weeks later we find out ok sure, when it comes to the kids on campus great, y’all go crazy political all you want, but when it comes to the big grownup things, the things that endure, that really matter, the ENDOWMENT, yea, not so political please.

As the saying goes, “You may not care about politics, but politics cares about you.” We can’t ask Jamal Khashoggi or Amber Thurman to define “political” but we can ask Ukrainians, Israelis, Venezuelans, Palestinians, and the victims of climate change their thoughts. They’ll have opinions.

But there is one thing for sure. There is nothing in this world more political than what you do or don’t do with a billion dollar chunk of investable capital.

And now is the time to decide how we as a community stand on that.

Mark Mullen
Class of ’89