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David Swensen写了一封愤怒的电子邮件。然后他按下了。

In an exclusive interview, the Yale endowment legend explains how, and why, he finally lost his cool.

那是三月初的一个星期五早晨,大卫·斯文森很生气。

这个legendary chief investment officer of the Yale endowment — the best performing of its kind over the last 20 years — had awoken in London to an email from the editor-in-chief of theYale Daily News

这个email, timestamped 10:05 p.m. New Haven time — or just after 3:00 a.m. in the U.K. — addressed anvination ypsen曾写过关于报纸覆盖在年初学生活动家持有的捐赠者教学活动。

编辑写道:“为深夜伸出援手道歉,但我想联系一下你的一部分。”。电子邮件解释说,她决定从斯文森的评论中删除一句与Yale Daily News“报告 - 报纸工作人员确定不准确的句子。“我明白你不希望你的专栏编辑,我们尊重该请求,但不能真诚地包括这一部分。”

到斯文森当天上午阅读电子邮件时,该栏目已经在网上发布,省略了有关句子,以及耶鲁大学使用指数基金的相关脚注。

Swensen — who had commanded theNewsstaff, in all caps, not to edit his essay — was not pleased.

格林尼治时间上午9:19,他从黑莓手机上发出了一个回应。

“你不了解简单的英语吗?”他要求。“你怎么了?”

这个chain of emails that followed — in which the investment chief blasted the behavior of theYale Daily Newseditors as “disgusting” and “inexcusable,” ultimately calling editor-in-chief Rachel Treisman a “coward” — revealed a side of Swensen that had rarely, if ever, been seen in public.

Described by Yale administrators, former students, and former colleagues as generous and benevolent — the kind of man who would take an interest in a young person’s career or make the time to give your young kids a campus tour — Swensen is widely and wildly admired, both at Yale and in the larger investing community.

On the infrequent occasion that he speaks at a public event or agrees to an interview with the press, Swensen is generally thoughtful and measured, carefully articulating his response to each question asked.

但是六个月进入一个学年,特别是积极的活动,关于捐赠的误导,以及普伦登被认为坚持不懈的覆盖范围Yale Daily News, he snapped.

“When I woke up and I saw what theDaily News的确,我认为这是如此,如此错误,在许多不同的方式,”一个月后,他坐在耶鲁投资办公室的扶手椅上,在康涅狄格州纽黑文。“他们违反了我对这件作品的处理方式的非常明确的信息。”

由此产生的编辑的打扮并不适用于公共消费。但在A.editor’s note published two days after the first emailwas sent, Treisman and her colleagues included a链接到电子邮件交换的PDF, writing that they were “disheartened that a Yale administrator considers this an appropriate way to voice concerns to theNews。“



“Everyone saw the emails,”一位与耶鲁有联系的分配人说,这是事实发生两周后的事。除了在校园里广泛传播外,还有Yale Daily Newseditorial was also widely spread on Twitter, then by media outlets including亚博赞助欧冠和彭博。

虽然斯文森自己没有这样的借口,some former colleagues suggest that the investment chief may have been under added stress at the time of the incident as a result of his health. (In September 2012 the university announced that Swensen had been diagnosed with cancer.)

不管怎样,斯文森所称的“不幸”交易所,对于传奇投资者来说是罕见的失误,这位传奇投资者以其出色的投资业绩和为大学服务的记录而自豪。

很难夸大斯文森在他33年担任首席信息官期间为耶鲁及其学生所做的贡献。他对捐赠的管理,使大学变成了今天的样子:捐赠基金覆盖了耶鲁大学运营预算的三分之一,使学校能够向其他负担不起学费的学生提供慷慨的奖学金。

但他对耶鲁的参与远远超出投资。自1980年以来,斯文森自1980年以来在大学教授课程,当时他仍在在华尔街工作。他经常与耶鲁住宅院校的学生发言,包括托管着名的啤酒和品酒活动。He hires interns and entry-level staff from Yale’s undergraduate and management schools, and he serves as a key adviser to Yale administrators like the university provost — even lending out members of his own staff when the university has a project that requires economic modeling or analysis.

Ben Polak, the provost since 2013, says Swensen’s influence at Yale spreads far beyond the endowment and the financial aspects of the university.

“He has a very clear sense of what a university’s mission is supposed to be and how you go about executing that,” Polak says. “He’s a counselor and teacher to me — but he has been for generations of provosts and presidents at Yale.”

Teaching is not an uncommon pursuit among endowment CIOs: Executive recruiter David Barrett says the ability to teach a class on finance or investing is often part of the draw for university job candidates. At Notre Dame, for instance, CIO Scott Malpass — one of the few endowment chiefs whose decades-long tenure rivals Swensen’s — teaches two classes periodically with the help of senior members of his investment staff.

“We really want to be part of the university and help train the next generation of top finance professionals with some of the values we try to instill in them here,” Malpass says.

Other investment chiefs, like Princeton’s Andrew Golden — who got his start as a senior associate at Yale’s endowment — might give a guest lecture once a year on a subject like ethics in finance or even, in Golden’s case, philosophy. Swensen gives guest lectures across Yale’s departments and graduate schools, including the management and law schools. This year he got a kick out of being asked to give a guest lecture in a humanities class.

教学和指导对斯文文来说很重要,他说他与前学生留在课堂上的前20名,20年,30年后仍然联系。“那些联系非常重要,对我来说非常有价值,”他补充道。

前学生采访亚博赞助欧冠他们滔滔不绝地谈论他们的老老师,他们甚至几十年后也清楚地记得他们的课。一位前学生基尔·尼亚斯说,她和斯文森一起上了两堂课,当时他仍然教了一个200人的大讲座,除了今天他教的那个小研讨会外。研讨会导致在投资办公室进行了暑期实习,次年斯文森担任她的高级论文顾问。今天,作为加州大学旧金山分校基金会投资公司的总经理,在高盛(GoldmanSachs)工作了很长时间后,Neas说,如果没有斯文森的指导,她就不会在那里了。

“His dedication to the institution and to mentoring people is really unparalleled,” she says. “I can’t think of another CIO who’s ever been as engaged on the campus, who’s taught classes and mentored students and advised on theses.”

A more recent student, class of 2017 graduate Henry Albrecht, says Swensen today is “quite the legend” on campus, adding that all of his friends were “very jealous” to hear that he had snagged Swensen as his undergraduate academic adviser.

“老实说,耶鲁大学的捐赠,你总是会有一些学生团体认为,捐赠资金不够用于某些事情,或者应该以不同的方式运行,”Albrecht说。“但我非常确信,绝大多数高校和学生团体不认同这种观点。”

It was that campus minority of endowment activists, however, who would escalate tensions between the investments office and portions of the student body, setting off the series of events culminating in Swensen’s harsh emails to student journalists.

Universities have historically beenat the center of activist movements in the U.S., from protests of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s to the first major divestment campaigns targeting South Africa’s apartheid polices in the ’70s and ’80s. Since then students have pushed for divestment as a means to effect change in nations like Sudan, a country that has been accused of human rights violations, and Israel, which activists condemn for the oppression of Palestinians. Industries including fossil fuels and firearms have also been targeted by students seeking to combat problems like climate change and gun violence.

“这只是与该领土有关的那些东西之一,”令人振奋的公司罗塞尔雷诺斯·索马斯联营公司的高级投资管理招聘人员德布拉布朗说。“但它可能是非常令人不愉快的。。。我尚未找到捐赠投资专业人士,他被校园激活主义派。“

这个se student activists have been able to find a voice in campus newspapers, in the form of op-eds and news coverage by student journalists. Today that voice is amplified thanks to online publishing and social media. TheYale Daily News, for instance, now has more than three times as many subscribers to its daily email as it has print issues in circulation, according to materials provided to potential advertisers. Its Twitter account has more than 25,000 followers, and its Facebook page has nearly 17,000 likes.

It was theYale Daily News’ coverage of the endowment, and the number of activist campaigns swirling around it, that prompted Swensen to pen an op-ed. In general Swensen avoids engaging with the student newspaper, whose reporting he has grown to mistrust, in part due to what he describes as an “incredibly unethical” incident that took place earlier in the year, when aNews工作人员采访了一所大学茶的与会者,斯文森与学生们讨论过记录。(在本故事出版后提供的声明中,Yale Daily News编辑们说,该报“坚持采访演讲者宣布的公开事件记录在案的与会者的做法,这在新闻界是传统的做法”,他们补充说,他们在原有的捐赠报告中纠正了事实上的不准确,“将继续努力公平、全面地报告捐赠和其他校园问题。”

Not long after that incident, however, Swensen had dinner with students who had taken his class in the fall, and the conversation turned to how the endowment is perceived on campus. The class — an extremely popular and hard-to-get-into senior seminar on investment management, taught by Swensen and his second-in-command, Dean Takahashi — had made this small group of students very familiar with how the Yale Investments Office works. It was not an understanding widely shared by their peers.

“学生说,'我们真的明白,投资办公室真正关心投资的性格和质量,并以深思熟虑和道德的方式,”斯文说。“但如果你是一个读者Yale Daily News,这不是你的印象。”

在过去的几年里,四个问题e endowment solidified as the primary causes of activist groups at Yale: fossil fuel investments, private prison financing, Puerto Rico's debt, and the construction of the Northern Pass, a project that aimed to bring Canadian hydropower to New England. A small part of the planned 192-mile electrical transmission line would have cut through New Hampshire forestland operated by one of Yale’s investment managers. It was controversial for a number of reasons, including concerns from local residents apprehensive about what it would have meant for tourism and real estate values. It also faced opposition from Quebec’s Pessamit Innu, a First Nations tribe with longstanding grievances against Hydro-Quebec, the Canadian utility company that would have powered the transmission line.

这个controversy surrounding the Northern Pass was detailed in theYale Daily News, alongside reporting on the divestment campaigns targeting fossil fuels, private prisons, and Puerto Rico bond holdings, resulting in what Swensen terms “relentless negative publicity” for the endowment.

In February all four issues came to a head when a coalition of seven student groups — the Association of Native Americans at Yale, Fossil Free Yale, Students Unite Now, the Yale ACLU, Yale Students for Prison Divestment, the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project, and the Yale Young Democratic Socialists of America — came together to organize a teach-in event addressing how the endowment is invested and whether the $27 billion fund could be better mobilized to support Yale, New Haven, and various environmental and social causes.

这个presentation touched on topics including how much Yale pays in money management fees, which “questionable” investments the university holds, and whether a higher spending rate of endowment funds could benefit Yale students or the city of New Haven, according to slides viewed by亚博赞助欧冠

耶鲁大学一年级学生、耶鲁大学学生被撤资董事会成员诺拉·海菲估计,2月3日的活动有230多人前来,只在设计容纳170人的讲堂里留下站立的空间。与会者包括七个团体中任何一个都不属于的学生,以及纽黑文居民、当选官员以及耶鲁投资责任咨询委员会成员。许多学生不得不被关在门口。

在与会者中是一个记者Yale Daily News。她article on the teach-in, published the following Monday, repeated some of the assertions made during the activists’ presentation, including a claim that Yale had exposure to private prison operators through exchange-traded funds — a statement that was untrue, according to Swensen.

事实上,斯文森声称演示文稿包含了一些错误,但它是他选择在他的私人监狱问题Yale Daily Newscolumn.

“很简单的说,耶鲁大学捐赠基金没有世博会sure to private prison management companies,” hewrote in the op-ed。经过reporting otherwise, he argued, theNewsfailed to meet “fundamental journalistic standards” of fact-checking and balanced reporting.

在编辑器的说明中解决了viNsen的Op-ed和后面的电子邮件交换Yale Daily News编辑表示,他们批评了“非常认真”,并向教学活动发出纠正。

“TheNewsstrives to report responsibly and accurately on campus issues, including Yale’s endowment,” they wrote. “Swensen, however, has not agreed to an on-the-record interview with theNewsin years. Our reporters are trained to cover every side of important campus debates, but that task becomes more difficult when key sources refuse to explain their positions.”



这个saga did not endwith theYale Daily News社论。在随后的日子里,学生活动家向校园报纸提交自己的OP-EDS。一旦由耶鲁学生为监狱撤资的成员撰写,要求学生倡导者和投资办公室之间更加开放的对话。另一个,由Fossil Free Yale成员Rachel Calnek-Sugin和Cassandra Darrow撰写的,认为,斯文森专栏在私募监狱的单一重点是证据证明,耶鲁耶鲁在教学活动期间发出的其他投资。

和许多大学一样,耶鲁大学没有报告它投资的资金经理,也没有报告它持有什么特定的证券——这是学生积极分子的一个症结,他们主张提高透明度。这种保密背后的信念是,共享这些信息将有害于投资业绩,因为正如斯文森解释的,积极的管理层都是在利用市场内的定价错误。

“如果你公开地确定你是在资产基础上投资的,你将削弱你从积极管理中受益的能力,”他说。“人们要求的那种透明性与推行成功的主动管理计划相抵触。”

斯文森辩称,学生活动人士实际上不需要知道捐赠基金是否接触到某些部门或公司,以便就是否应该剥离这些证券展开深思熟虑的辩论。

“有了某种意义,这是无关紧要的,”他说。“说,”哦,好吧,我们不必有辩论,因为它不在投资组合中 - 因为它明天可能在那里。“

但学生们仍然想要答案。被拒绝从他们的大学获得的信息,耶鲁大学学生等被剥夺监狱的学生群体转向公共税收文件和监管备案,这些文件只为总投资组合提供了一个小小的一瞥。

“Information regarding Yale’s investments is extremely inaccessible and opaque,” says prison divestment advocate Heaphy. “While we would not expect Yale to release the entirety of its highly watched portfolio, we find it concerning that, in general, university administrators and representatives of the investments office are not willing to engage in an open dialogue with students regarding the management of the endowment.” Students hoping to engage with the university on issues relating to ethical investing must go through the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, a committee made up of faculty, staff, alumni, and students. This committee, in turn, makes recommendations to the Yale trustees who govern the endowment. Other universities, including Ivy League peers Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, have established similar channels for student activism.

“大多数CIO都不直接与学生活动家聘用,”捐赠者,基金会和家庭办公室的执行招聘人员Charles Skorina说。“大学不希望投资团队吸引这一点。”

这个re are some exceptions — Notre Dame’s Malpass, for instance, is known for having an open-door policy with students, and frequently meets with activists and other groups to help them understand how the endowment is invested.

“It’s certainly [in] their interest and their right to understand the investment process and how we balance being a good fiduciary and a good steward,” Malpass says. “We may not always agree, but I think they appreciate the efforts we make.”

In general, however, executive recruiter Brown says CIOs try to insulate themselves from student activism. But that too can cause problems, leading to very one-sided debates on campus.

“There’s been quite a period where the student protesters have been very vocal and the university hasn’t really responded,” Swensen says. “I think it’s time to respond.”



Swensen and his team正在致力于解决学校学生活动中心的四个问题中的每一个问题:化石燃料,私人监狱,波多黎各的债券和北方通行证。虽然这太快了解这些立场文件是否会超越投资办事处,但它不是第一次捐赠的第一次,就是对其投资的关注。

In August 2014, after Yale trustees had voted against divesting from fossil fuels, Swensen penned a letter to Yale’s asset managers regarding the potential economic impacts of climate change. The letter — which was made public and can now be found on the investments office website — called on Yale’s managers to include assessments of carbon footprints and the direct consequences of climate change on expected returns when evaluating investment opportunities.

斯文文说:“毫无疑问,毫无疑问,处理学生活动家可以帮助澄清自己养出的问题的想法。”“[这封信]是由学生活动家和耶鲁提出的问题的一个例子,使得一个制度决定不剥夺,但在我认为最终对处理气候变化问题的建设性反应的问题上采取机构立场。“

Students, however, continue to push for Yale to take a firmer stance on fossil fuels: In April theYale Daily Newsreported that members and supporters of Fossil Free Yale had ralliedoutside the investments office chanting “Yale says more money; we say time’s up.” The group delivered a set of demands to the office, asking that Swensen and his team disclose Yale’s holdings in fossil fuel companies and begin divesting from the industry. The demands also targeted Yale’s investments with Baupost Group, the second-largest holder of Puerto Rico debt. (Yale had at least $740 million invested with the hedge fund firm as of June 30, 2016, according to tax filings.)

While the continued onslaught of activism, and the accompanying bad press in theYale Daily News他说,斯文森显然很沮丧,他说他不想在一份远离政治和大学角色压力的私营部门工作。

“Oh, I wouldn’t like that,” he says. “I like this whole package. Being part of the Yale community is a huge privilege.”

这个experience of having his “intemperate” remarks blasted across media headlines, however, is not one he is interested in repeating: As a condition of being interviewed by亚博赞助欧冠斯文文要求审查任何直接报价。