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Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-NV)

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-CA)

Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Judy Chu (D-CA)

Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)

US House of Representatives

The Capitol

Washington, DC 20515

February 8, 2024

Dear Chairs Barragan, Chu, Horsford and Jayapal,

America’s most influential universities and colleges have retained lobbyists to fend off new taxes

and regulations on the money in their tax exempt endowments, which total hundreds of billions

of dollars.

We have no problem with their retention of help, or their advocacy.

We do, however, strongly object to these elite institutions asking so many Members of Congress

who are Black, Hispanic, and Asian American to aid them in this financial concern, when they

have been, as a cohort, terribly uninterested in the inclusion of people of color in the

management of these crucial assets.

We’d call that chutzpah.

The Diverse Asset Managers Initiative (DAMI) has spent 8 years pushing these and other

institutions to say how and whether they work with women and people of color in the

management of these huge pools of capital. They are, with some exception, unwilling to answer

basic questions about diversity, and in some acute cases categorically refusing to engage.

DAMI takes no position on the merits of the proposals, whether and how their endowments

should be taxed. We do call on Members of Congress who care about diversity among

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endowment managers to request, or require, that at a minimum these universities make public

their data as to whether they work with women or people of color in the management of the

endowments they are trying to shield from taxation.

It’s well-known that women and people of color are largely excluded from the asset

management industry – even though these individuals perform similarly to or better than their

white, male peers. Indeed, Chairwomen of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine

Waters (D-CA) and Joyce Beatty (D-OH) spent an enormous amount of time successfully

making clear the vast underutilization of women and people of color by allocators, with repeated

hearings and studies in the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion

during the 117th Congress.

In 2020, U.S. Representatives Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) and Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-Mass.)

requested diversity data from 25 leading colleges and universities. Those responses are

available in this report. Notre Dame refused to reply. Of the others that did, none provided an

answer to the question whether they actually work with Black people. All of the universities

responded to Congress with anodyne statements about diversity, or conflating all numbers to

obscure the fact that the Latino/a and African American numbers are indefensibly low.

Princeton, Yale and Stanford are standouts in their refusal to release comprehensive

diversity figures. Their leadership has made clear that they consider the questions themselves

offensive or inappropriate.

Among the private schools, Duke and Georgetown have made their numbers public. Among

public schools, the University of California has best in class reporting. That tells us that the

universities have the numbers; they just need to be pushed to reveal them. Which is sad. In

most areas of procurement—which is what an asset management contract is—American

institutions not only freely report their diversity spend, they are often proud of it.

The bottom line is: Colleges and universities are coming to diverse members of Congress to

preserve a tax break. Good for them, that’s the American way. But the majority of them are

working hard to insist that minority and female exclusion from their asset management programs

is a supply problem, or irrelevant, or that women and people of color aren’t as talented.

The arrogance, if not the ignorance, is impressive.

We need to hold colleges and universities to a higher standard. They need to make diversity a

priority in their finances; it is costing them returns, which is a shame.

Best,

Robert Raben

DAMI