Jacob Dressler

Yale students are calling for the university to “divest” from investments in weapons manufacturing companies.

If you didn’t know, Yale is basically a gigantic hedgefund run by the top 1%. This is the case for most massive non-profits.

It goes without saying that everyone on Yale’s board of trustees is well connected, some globally esteemed, and of course uber rich and important.

Here are just a few people on their board: Ned Lamont (ex-offico), Anette Thomas (former CEO of the Guardian), Carlos Moreno (former ambassador to Belize), Chip Goodyear (family member of the ginormously successful Goodyear company), Joshua Bekenstein (co-chairman of Bain capital), Marta L. Tellado (CEO of consumers union), Michael J. Cavanagh (president of Comcast and CEO of NBCUniversal), William E. Kennard (chairperson of AT&T), and the rest are all either college presidents or massive hedgefund managers.

But being incredibly rich and powerful doesn’t necessarily mean an institution is shady.

If you had a $40 billion endowment like Yale does, wouldn’t you want rich and powerful people advising you on where to invest your money?

I don’t fault Yale for amassing and hording billions of dollars, cannibalizing the local community, and sharing those billions with cronies, pals and global influencers. I really don’t.

But it does add insult to injury when Yale promises these half-assed commitments to “social justice” or “humanitarianism” only for the purposes of saving their own bidet polished heinies.

Yale’s Commitment to Ethical Investing

In 1972 Yale published a short book called “The Ethical Investor,” where they outlined their commitment to “ethical” investing in 119 pages of rambling mental gymnastics.

They published this book in response to students who protested their investments that supported the apartheid in South Africa.

50 years later, students are again outraged over Yale’s investments, claiming that some of Yale’s hidden investments are likely in companies that support the war machine.

Yale has bestowed the responsibility of ethical investing upon itself so they can’t really complain when their students call them out for having sketchy investments.

Make no mistake, Yale doesn’t actually care. At all. Yale’s number one goal is to make billions of dollars.

They invest in a global network of hundreds of companies, law firms, hedgefunds, other massive non-profits, lobbying funds, real estate, foreign initiatives, and trusts.

If they cared about their money reaching sketchy places they would’ve said something a long time ago.

Now, I’m sure not all of their money is tied up in the Cayman islands. For example, some of their investments go towards humanitarian aims, like their investments in cancer research. Or in other non-profits who advertise humanitarian causes but are actually concerned with the same thing Yale cares about: making billions of dollars.

All the non-profits Yale donates to use the donations for their “causes,” but invest the rest in their own networks of hedgefunds, lawfirms, real estate, and so forth. Industries where all the important people on Yale’s trustee board all have a tremendous amount of pull.

The practice of investing in non-profits, which then funnel investments back into industries where Yale’s trustees hold significant sway, is indeed sketchy. It raises questions about the purity of the intentions behind their philanthropic efforts. This issue is not unique to Yale but is indicative of a broader problem in how wealth and influence can be used in the non-profit sector.

For Yale to maintain its reputation as a leading liberal institution, it should embrace transparency in its investment strategy. The students’ call for divestment highlights the need for the university to reassess its investment policies and make them more aligned with the ethical principles it claims to uphold. Genuine commitment to social justice and humanitarianism can’t be merely lip service; it must be reflected in every aspect of the institution, including its investments.