Endowment Managers Want You to Eat Shit and Die.
by dagwood crabtree
Let me explain.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s endowment, like those of universities across the country, is a set of financial assets that the University invests, using the returns to meet operational needs of sorts (building renovations, scholarships, programming). The endowment is, frankly speaking, repulsively immense at over $11 billion. (You should be repulsed alongside me given the salaries of workers at the university, the chronic food insecurity across campus, and economic precarity across the town of Chapel Hill.).
The endowment claims to be “privately managed” by UNC Management Company (UNCMC). Through its claims of being “private,” the endowment has successfully seized $11 billion from public accountability or even visibility.
UNCMC claims to be private in spite of the fact it was created by public decree by endowment manager Mark Yusko in 2002, serves a public function, and is directed by mostly public officials. UNCMC is governed by a Board of Directors in which UNC Chapel Hill, the elite, PWI flagship institution of the UNC system, is overrepresented.
Currently, there are 16 members of UNCMC’s board of directors. Two UNC-Chapel Hill trustees sit as directors (David Boliek Jr. and John Preyer) in addition to UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts, Vice Chancellor for Development Michael Andreasen, and Vice Chancellor for Finance & Operations Nate Knuffman. This means that five members of the board hold public positions at UNC-Chapel Hill alone–even though the endowment is the fund for all the campuses across the state and even though it claims to be private.
Aside from legally required filings, and an abstract birds eye view annual report published by UNCMC – mechanisms for transparency and public oversight are negligible – mechanisms for accountability: nonexistent.
For example, the body responsible for creating and enforcing UNCMC conflict of interest policy? UNCMC.
Or more specifically, UNCMC’s treasurer, who at the moment is Nate Knuffman, who makes half a milly off of taxpayer money.
Now, to their credit, UNCMC, through the 990 tax form, does let us know of a few business interests which may conflict.
However, UNCMC does not disclose what exactly its conflict of interest policy is.
The endowment is an $11 billion black box unaccountable to anyone but its managers, people who materially benefit from its current configuration, and the assets themselves, billions growing into billions for the purpose of making more billions.
Even before the endowment’s re-designation into a private entity, which legally rationalizes its black box status, a brief perusal of the endowment’s history demonstrates its constant commitment not to students or faculty, but to profits. I know, surprising right?
Take the South African anti-apartheid student movement in the 1980s here in Chapel Hill. The Anti-Apartheid Support Group (AASG), a core organizing force on campus demanding the divestiture of the endowment funds from the South African apartheid regime, was organizationally effective. They got majority student support for divestment with one student referendum in the Spring of 1983 resulting in 3313 out of 5204 students in favor of divesting from the white supremacist apartheid state of South Africa. Another vote in February of 1986 determined that 70% of students who voted supported divestment. In addition to the student body, AASG mobilized University faculty who, through the Faculty Council, passed a resolution in favor of divestment. (For the record, the resolution was rejected by the AASG for being watered down and vague. Shoes stay fitting I guess).
Anti-Apartheid Support Group collection within the Wilson Archives
AASG stirred up enough good trouble that they got then-Chancellor Fordham and Chief Finance Officer Farris W. Womack to speak out in support of the endowment divestment from the South African apartheid regime. The endowment board repeatedly rejected AASG demands and student referendums while simultaneously ignoring faculty and administrative pressure. It was not until 1987 that the endowment board finally moved to divest, and arguably, it was not done in response to university-wide pressure alone, but due to the lack of returns on investments.
Group Protests at Ceremony, photograph by Shea Tisdale. Nov. 6, 1986, ed. 1, The Black Ink.
UNC was pro-apartheid until apartheid was no longer profitable. Which is to say, the endowment operated in opposition to student, faculty, and administrative requests and demands in pursuit of profit. The endowment will pursue profits regardless of the will of the people it claims to serve. Which is to say—historically, the endowment managers have wanted you to eat shit and die if it means they can continue profiteering.
Which is all to say, the calls for divestment right now—e.g. climate groups calling for fossil fuel divestments, March for Our Lives for gun industry divestments, Students for Justice in Palestine for divestments from the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel—will not work through invoking a moral high ground, appealing to justice claims, or demanding a recognition of humanity and our collective futures. When I say, the endowment managers want you to eat shit and die, I say it not only to be vocally critical of a largely invisibilized seat of power and disgustingly hoarded wealth, I say it to highlight the urgent necessity of imagining news ways of organizing. The tools in our toolbox are insufficient.
The endowment managers want you to eat shit and die. What are we gonna do about it?
For comments, conversation, and criticism, email me: dagwoodcrabtree@gmail.com. Nothing is certain or resolved; tell me something I don’t know, really.
From Wilson Special Collection (set up an appointment and go look for yourself!), collection title: Anti-Apartheid Support Group of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Records, 1980-1987; Student Protest Movements at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Anti-Apartheid Activism (1982-1987)
