Harvard University and Harvard Law School's Obama Administration

“Harvard’s endowment posted a 21.4 percent gain for fiscal year 2011, bringing the endowment’s value up to $32 billion, the University announced Thursday in the annual report of the Harvard Management Company….The increase from $27.4 billion at the close of the 2010 fiscal year is also nearly double the 11 percent rate of growth that Harvard Management Company posted that year….The increase in liquidity, or the ability to convert investments into cash, will allow Harvard Management Company to take advantage of sub-market priced securities…As a part of developing its internal investment team, Harvard Management Company is devoting its resources to investigating new opportunities abroad, especially in China…During the financial crisis of 2008, Harvard’s endowment suffered heavy losses, plummeting by nearly 30 percent to $22.6 billion….While Harvard Management Company invests the money, the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, determines the endowment payout rate…”

--from the Sept. 22, 2011 issue of The Harvard Crimson

“…Harvard Law School alumni have filled the halls of the U.S. government since Barack Obama's '91 election as the…President…in November 2008. In putting together his administration, Obama selected more than 70 Harvard Law School alumni and faculty who will assist him in crafting…policy in areas as diverse as the economy, the environment, and the military.”

-- from an August 03, 2009 article on the Harvard Law School website

Harvard University and Harvard Law School’s Obama Administration

Since a Harvard Law School graduate named Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, not much progress in restoring economic prosperity for most U.S. working-class and middle-class people at home, protecting the earth from environmental destruction by transnational corporations (like BP) or reducing foreign civilian and U.S. military casualties in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan has been achieved. Yet between 2009 and 2012 the value of the domestic and foreign corporate stocks, bonds and hedge fund investments contained in the tax exempt and “non-profit” Harvard University/Harvard Management Conpany endowment’s stock portfolio increased from $22.6 billion to over $30 billion.

One reason could be because the more than 70 Harvard Law School-trained alumni or Harvard Law School professors that Obama recruited from the elite Ivy League law school classrooms of Cambridge, Massachusetts to help him craft his administration's economic, environmental and military policy probably spent most of their time at Harvard Law School with their heads just stuck inside corporate law books, instead of actually working for radical democratic change within U.S. society. In 2009, for example, executive positions in the Democratic Obama Administration were occupied by Harvard Law School-trained alumni or Harvard Law School professors like the following people:
1. Preeta Bansal ’89 General counsel and senior policy adviser, Office of Management and Budget;

2. Jeremy B. Bash ’98 Chief of staff for CIA Director Leon Panetta;

3. Jacqueline A. Berrien ’86 Chair, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission;

4. Charles Blanchard ’85 General counsel, Department of the U.S. Air Force;

5. Jason E. Bordoff ’04 Associate director for climate change at the Council on Environmental Quality;

6. William Burke-White '02 Office of Foreign Policy Planning, State Department;

7. Cassandra Q. Butts '91 Senior Advisor in the Office of the Chief Executive Officer at the Millennium Challenge Corporation;

8. Nancy-Ann Min DeParle ’83 Director, White House Office for Health Reform;

9. Norman L. Eisen ’91 Special counsel for ethics and government reform, Office of the White House Counsel;

10. Chai R. Feldblum ’85 Commissioner, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission;

11. Michael Froman ’91 Deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs;

12. Jocelyn Frye ‘88 Deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and director of policy and projects for the first lady;

13. Juan Garcia ’92 Assistant secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, in the Department of Defense
14. Julius Genachowski ’91 Chairman, Federal Communications Commission;

15. Ian H. Gershengorn ’93 Deputy assistant attorney general, Department of Justice;

16. Daniel Gordon '86 Administrator, Office of Federal Policy Procurement;

17. Joshua Gotbaum '78 head of U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation;

18. Michael J. Gottlieb ’03 Associate counsel, Office of the White House Counsel;

19. Danielle C. Gray ’03 Associate counsel, Office of the White House Counsel;

20. William Gunn ’86 General counsel of the Department of Veterans Affairs
;
21. Nicole Y. Lamb-Hale ’91 Deputy general counsel of the Department of Commerce’s Office of General Counsel;

22. Scott Blake Harris ’76 General counsel, Department of Energy;

23. Emily Hewitt ’78 Chief judge, U.S. Court of Federal Claims;
24. Ketanji Jackson ’96 Member, U.S. Sentencing Commission;
25. Helen Kanovsky ’76 General counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development;

26. Juliette Kayyem ’95 Assistant secretary for intergovernmental programs, Department of Homeland Security;

27. Ron Klain ’87 Chief of staff to the Vice President;

28. Harold Hongju Koh ’80 Legal adviser, Department of State;

29. David Kris ’91 Assistant attorney general, head of National Security Division, Department of Justice
;
30. Marisa Lago '82 Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets and Development
31. Michael E. Leiter ’00 Director, National Counterterrorism Center;

32. Stuart A. Levey ’89 Undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence;

33. John Levi '72 LL.M. '73 Board member, Legal Services Corporation;

34. Wilma Lewis ’81 Assistant secretary for Land and Mineral Management at the Department of the Interior;

35. Chris Lu ’91 White House Cabinet secretary;

36. Bruce E. MacDonald LL.M. ’92 Overseer of military commissions;

37. Robert Malley '90 Envoy to Egypt and Syria;

38. Raymond Mabus ’76 Secretary, U.S. Navy;

39. Demetrios Marantis ’93 Deputy U.S. trade representative;

40. Tim Massad ’84 Chief counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program;

41. Andrew McLaughlin ’94 Deputy chief technology officer for the Obama Administration;

42. George Munoz '77 President's Commission on White House Fellows;

43. Quentin Palfrey ’02 Associate general counsel of the Department of Commerce’s Office of General Counsel;

44. Tom Perez ’87 Assistant attorney general, head of the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice;

45. Thomas Perrelli ’91 Associate attorney general, Department of Justice;

46. Samantha Power ’99 Senior director for multilateral affairs, National Security Council;

47. Stephen Preston ’83 General counsel Central Intelligence Agency;
48. Blake Roberts ’06 Deputy associate counsel to the president, Office of the White House Counsel;

49. Paul L. Oostburg Sanz '99 General Counsel of the Navy;

50. Edith Ramirez '92 Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission;

51. Paul Sarbanes '60 President's Commission on White House Fellows;

52.. Anne-Marie Slaughter ’85 Director of policy planning, State Department;

53.. Larry Strickling ’76 Assistant secretary for Communications and Information, Department of Commerce;

54.. Todd D. Stern ’77 Special envoy for climate change;

55.. Willard Tom ’79 General Counsel of the Federal Trade Commission

55.. Gloria Valencia-Weber '86 Board member, Legal Services Corporation;

57.. Robert Verchick '89 Deputy associate administrator, Environmental Protection Agency Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation;

58. Solomon B. Watson IV '76 General Counsel of the Army;

59.. Barry White ’67 Ambassador, Norway;

60.. David Barron ’94 Principal deputy assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice;

61. Jody L. Freeman LL.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95 Counselor for energy and climate change, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change;

62.. Elena Kagan ’86 Solicitor general of the United States;

63.. Daniel J. Meltzer ’75 Principal deputy counsel to the president, Office of the White House Counsel;

64.. Dean Martha Minow Member of the board of advisors, Legal Services Corporation;

65.. Cass R. Sunstein ’78 Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget; and

66.. Laurence Tribe '66 President's Commission on White House Fellows.

And as Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter observed in his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, “eventually a full quarter of Obama appointees would have some connection (as alumni or faculty) to Harvard…” So it’s not surprising that between 2009 and 2012 the Democratic Obama Administration’s government of Harvard people, by Harvard People and for Harvard people was increased the value of Harvard University Inc.’s assets much more than it increased the percentage of U.S. national wealth possessed by most U.S. working-class and middle-class people. Or that, coincidentally, over $400,000 in campaign contributions have been made by Harvard University-affiliated individuals to the 2012 Obama presidential campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets website..

Yet a U.S. federal government of Harvard people, by Harvard people and for Harvard people is not as democratic a government as “a government of the people, by the people” and “for the people” (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln).