“Endangered Endowments: How Hedge Funds Are Bankrupting Higher Education”Wednesday, April 27th, 6pm, Smith 102
The University of Washington invests over $500 million dollars of its endowment in hedge funds—largely unregulated, high-cost investment vehicles run by the ultra-wealthy. Hedge funds have done a great deal to endanger endowments and weaken higher education in the United States: they charge astronomically high fees, while delivering poor returns, and engage in dangerous practices that increase the personal wealth of hedge fundmanagers while making college more expensive and four-year degrees less attainable for all but the very rich.
By funneling money to hedge funds, public universities like the UW are also supporting racist and classist policieshedge fund managers are notorious for rallying behind: expansion of private prisons, rolling back corporate regulation, slashing the minimum wage, eliminating pensions, privatizing public schools, trammeling unions, cutting taxes for the wealthy, and forcing cash-strapped nations like Puerto Rico further into insolvency.
Come learn more about the hedge fund take over of higher education and what can be done about it with Elizabeth Parisan from Hedge Clippers
, an organization working to expose the mechanisms hedge funds and billionaires use to influence government and politics in order to expand their wealth, influence and power. We’ll also have student and worker speakers who will talk about the connection between hedge funds and their social justice struggles on campus, including the campaign for the UW to divest from prisons.Sponsored by: UW Labor Studies Student Association (LSSA), UW United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), UW Academic Workers for a Democratic University (AWDU)