by Edward Stringham
I have enjoyed working with excellent colleagues and Ph.D. students at Texas Tech University, but I am thrilled to be hired as an endowed chair at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Undergraduate students interested in private enterprise, drop everything you are doing and enroll now! Parents of toddlers destined for success, create a fifteen year plan for your kids to send them our way. The first Episcopal college in New England, Wall Street pipeline Trinity has the fourth highest percentage of alumni millionaires. Actually, the atmosphere on its collegiate gothic campus is ideal in so many ways.
The Davis Endowment was made possible by legendary Wall Streeter and Forbes 400 member, Shelby Cullom Davis. The endowment sponsors classes, lectures, research on private enterprise, and reaches hundreds of students and thousands in the public. With more than $16 million, the Davis Endowment is one of the largest of its kind in the world.
Since its founding nearly 35 years ago, the Davis Endowment has been directed by Gerald Gunderson, longtime editor of the Journal of Private Enterprise, and author of A New Economic History of America and The Wealth Creators: An Entrepreneurial History of America, among others. Armen Alchian stated that Gunderson’s work, “stands head and shoulders above anything else in explaining our history and especially how the capitalist system operated and still operates when allowed.” Along with Gerald Gunderson, I will be working with John Alcorn, Bill Butos, and other great professors.
I am particularly grateful for Gerald Gunderson, Shelby Cullom Davis, and Shelby’s daughter, Diana Davis Spencer, for helping ensure that this endowment is where it is today. Gerald spent many years watching over the endowment and Diana Spencer was influential in speaking out in article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal when an ex-administrator was attempting to divert most of the funds out it. Diana Spencer worked with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and the Philanthropy Roundtable in the fight to have her father’s donor intent honored. She stated “If colleges like Trinity undermine donors’ confidence that they will respect their wishes, they place at risk the generous support they receive from our foundation and so many others—and the benefits that inure to millions of students from this largesse.” (The ex-administrator who was attempting to divert the funds resigned shortly after coming up with another controversial idea , and more recently the Commonwealth of Virginia names him in a lawsuit for misuse of funds and violation of donor intent for his announced closure of Sweet Briar College.) A Pope Center report “An unusual victory for donor intent at Trinity College” documents some of the details of this multi-year battle and win. Gunderson wins first prize for the most persistent endowment director of all time.
I thank the search committee at Trinity, my professors (especially Peter Boettke), colleagues (especially Benjamin Powell), and countless others for helping me get here. I am looking forward to returning to my Yankee roots and working to build the premier liberal arts center for the study of private enterprise.
ThinkMarkets 