A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said to be one of the nation's premier Ivy League universities, recently took time off from work to praise Luigi Mangione.
Dr. Julia Alekseyeva, who describes herself as a “socialist and ardent anti-fascist” and goes by the social media handle @thesoviette, posted on TikTok that she was lucky enough to work at the same school she graduated from a 26-year university. He said he has never been more proud. The elderly suspect in the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The backdrop for her eerie oath from the song “Les Misérables”, “Can You Hear the People Singing?”, was genuine “Workers of the World Unite” material. Later, in another social media post, the (God knows what) doctor called Mangione an “icon.”
The twisted messages in all of these are very clear. Wasting Thompson is just being pumped up because it fits a particular social justice narrative. People who fall under the left's definition of greedy capitalists deserve death.
If you're wondering what such pedagogy accomplishes, consider this. UPenn was one of the hotbeds of Jewish hatred in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas massacre. Administrator Liz McGill was forced to resign due to administrators' indifference to the grand celebrations.
Alexeyeva later apologized but did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for Penn told the Post that her comments were “contrary to the values” of the university and that Alexeyeva “retracted them.”
Of course, it's better late than never. But I'm a financial writer. So I started asking Wall Street sources, how could schools have the luxury of hiring such weirdos to attend their schools in the first place?
The University of Pennsylvania charges undergraduates more than $85,000 a year for left-wing indoctrination, and Wall Street sources who follow the university's financial turmoil say the inflated tuition fees are still barely enough to make ends meet. It is said that there is not enough.
That's where the school's multibillion-dollar endowment comes into play.
indoctrination funds
They fund the progressive indoctrination that takes place in university classrooms. The incoming Trump administration has a unique opportunity to end this madness by taking aim at the ways in which the education system has been rigged at taxpayer expense.
Think about it. UPenn's endowment is approximately $23 billion. Harvard University is $53 billion. By comparison, a hedge fund known as Point72 run by longtime trader (and Mets owner) Steve Cohen has $35 billion in assets under management.
Yes, they are big and powerful in the market. University endowments invest in everything from private equity to venture capital startups to common stocks and bonds. Their investment managers are featured in mainstream media alongside some of the world's leading asset managers. They often miss out on double-digit returns due to their size, which puts them at the forefront of some of the most lucrative investment opportunities.
Recently, some major companies have turned to private equity funds that invest in China to control some of their funds. One such fund, Singapore-based Hillhouse, has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Yale University's endowment was a major client of Hill House.
Hillhouse officials say the company is reducing its exposure to the communist Chinese economy. But if you know anything about China Inc., all of the companies based there have close ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Do you see what I'm trying to do with this? Yale University has witnessed some of the most egregious anti-Israel protests since October 7, but school administrators have largely tolerated them in near silence. However, the crew did not reveal anything about the Chinese government's oppression of religious minorities such as the Uyghurs.
And they do all this with large amounts of taxpayer aid beyond the usual things like increasingly forgivable student loans and government subsidies for ridiculous research. Most donations are tax-free, and if Donald Trump and his people have the courage, they can end this madness.
Large donations are exempt from capital gains taxes. The same goes for dividends. They pay only 1.4% tax on their income. There is talk in Mr. Trump's circles of raising it above 35% because such tax-free profits would effectively give the endowment a license to fund the strangest things coming out of the university system.
And this is where things might get interesting. Let's focus on UPenn, which has an endowment investment structure typical of the Ivey family.
Private equity accounts for the largest chunk of UPenn's $23 billion endowment, with more than $8.4 billion compared to $7.8 billion in 2023, according to a reading of the annual report. . Taxes on endowments have become heavier, coupled with a slowdown in fundraising from wealthy Wall Streeters like Alum. Apollo Global Management's Mark Rowan could force the fund to sell its PE holdings, which are notoriously illiquid.
The result is a lack of funding and administrators are forced to make difficult decisions, including whether it's worth paying a TikTok-obsessed, Mangione-obsessed professor like Alexeyeva.
