HE also contends that others among the nation's biggest investors — charitable funds and endowments — need to play more active roles.
But I do find Faust's argument weakened by her failure even to acknowledge that existing definitions of "endowment" and "fiduciary responsibility" — the duty of trustees to build endowments — need a fresh look.
As long term investors, fiduciaries of endowments need not worry unduly about short-term results.
A combination of more strategic planning, active recruitment and retention strategies, and longer term, flexible funding, for example through endowments, needs to be promoted.
Howard Federoff, executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., next described the difficulties of trying to salvage the situation for at least some of the researchers at an institution that has a good reputation but not the big endowment needed to finance all the deserving labs and scientists losing NIH funds.
It has been difficult to attract a high profile museum professional without the endowment needed to sustain its historical operating budget of around $17 million.
But for this to work, the rate of growth of the endowment needs to be high.
A more robust endowment needs to be built, the ensemble's rough edges (lapses in intonation, wiry brashness in the strings, a sense of pushing the sound) buffed and the morale of the players wholly mended after a tumultuous, often bitter ending to its long relationship with Mr. Morlot's predecessor, Gerard Schwarz.
Thus we engaged several professors of American history, including those mentioned in the column, and paraded them before the endowment as needed.
True to his promise, Mr. Summers made the case that despite its $26 billion endowment, Harvard needed the alumni's money, presumably for financial aid for those brilliant, big-hearted kids.
