Congress targets Harvard, Yale and Top Universities with China-Linked Endowments
Politico | PHELIM KINE
Pressure is increasing on universities to divest from entities engaged in human rights abuses in China and elsewhere. Most recently, Rep. Greg Murphy “sent a letter to the 15 private universities with the largest endowments — Harvard, Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among them — asking them to purge their investment portfolios of ‘entities that are supporting the imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims or aiding the Russian Federation’s horrific invasion of Ukraine’… The Protecting Endowments from Our Adversaries Act is designed to cut U.S. university endowment investments that fund abusive or hostile Chinese entities.”
As reporter Kine notes, “A successful congressional push to sever U.S. university endowments from Chinese investments could provide a template for legislation requiring private sector investors, including private equity firms and hedge funds, to do likewise, downsizing the U.S. financial sector’s relationship with China.”
Murphy’s isn’t the only initiative. “[It] echoes the efforts of Keith Krach…who urged university governing boards in 2020 to disclose details of endowment investments in Chinese firms and to divest from those on the Commerce Department’s Entity List or linked to human rights abuses. Universities ignored Krach’s advice…”
Students are also behind divestment efforts, including the nonprofit Athenai Institute, which is “dedicated to prodding U.S. universities into divesting their endowments of any Chinese Communist Party-linked investments.”
With increased pressure, some are responding. “Harvard — which boasts an endowment valued at over $53 billion — is considering reducing its endowment’s investments in China due to ‘growing political and market risk,’ Bloomberg reported in April.”
The argument that it’s “too difficult” to audit endowments “ignores university initiatives to divest from fossil fuel investments in recent years.”
Related:
Biden Administration Plans to End Inquiry of Colleges’ Foreign Funds (Chronicle, Oct 5, 2022)
The Harvard Connection (Spectator World, 5/26/22)
Harvard and the Fight for Foreign Collaboration (Crimson, 5/26/22)
