More on the Rose: "Disaster Capitalism?"

When the Rose Museum closing was announced, I suspected that we would see evidence that Brandeis, in this era of economic downturn, was uniquely broke. Perhaps its endowment had been eaten by Bernie Madoff, or had done markedly worse than everyone else's. But it turns out that the Chronicle for Higher Education's survey of university endowments indicates that Brandeis has lost 22.9% of its original $700 million, right at, even slightly under, the average loss of 25%. Therefore, Brandeis is declaring a calamity in order to seize the cash it could generate from the art. My guess is that at least some board members and administrators have been eyeing that art for a long time. Naomi Klein calls this phenomenon of doing bold, bad things (like the bank bailout last October) "Disaster Capitalism," and it turns out that the arts aren't immune to it.