A good question, from a reader:

Thanks for your post on high-risk campus investments.
Hmm, a little while ago I commented on the Dartmouth
governance controversy, and noted that the great majority of the
newly expanded group of “charter trustees,” (i.e., “self”- or board-appointed,
not elected trustees) came from the finance sector, mainly what one
of my retired banker friends now calls “fringe finance.” And of
course they were leaders in that sector, not mere employees.
I looked through the bios of the top governing body of my alma mater,
Brown, the Brown Corporation, and found that a majority of them were also from finance, including fringe finance.
Is there a connection here? Should we be looking into why leaders from one sector of the economy came to dominate the boards of some elite universities far out of proportion of their numbers in the population, and since their
leadership of their own organizations is now discredited, whether
they have also badly led academia?
Roy M. Poses MD
Clinical Associate Professor
Brown University School of Medicine