[cuuupid]

> This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million.

This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.

[tzs]

I think you may misunderstand how endowments work.

An endowment is a collection of funds that have been donated. Generally each donation is for furtherance of some specific aim that the donor wanted to promote.

Usually the terms of the donation are that the money should be managed to support the purpose for which it was donated in perpetuity. To implement that the managers of the endowment invest the money for long term growth, and use the earnings to go toward the purpose of the donation.

Cornell currently spends each year around 5% from their endowment, as do most other top schools.

Endowments are usually not used to make up unexpected shortfalls for at least 2 reasons:

1. They are already spending all they can consistent with supporting the various causes the donors donated in perpetuity.

2. Because the endowment is a collection of individual donations that were donated for different purposes there might not actually be anything in the endowment that can be used towards a particular shortfall.

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What is Cornell's endowment used for? Edit: Also: Who were the donors? What restrictions did they place on their donation?