2.哈佛持有的美股占比显著低于其他捐赠基金，最近美股牛市让其他捐赠基金赚了个盆满钵满。

    3.哈佛拥有大批低流动性资产，有些资产在金融危机期间被迫大幅折价出售。折价出售一直在拖累它的5年投资回报率。

    不幸的是，这些理由每一个都很容易反驳。首先，哈佛一直是美国最大的捐赠基金，但它在过去毫不吃力地就能拿出优于市场的表现。举例来说，在截至2012年6月30日的二十年中，它的表现排名第五。

    其次，哈佛排名下滑是由于它持有公开市场股票相对较少，这一点是没错。但耶鲁（Yale）等其他捐赠基金配置的公开市场股票同样很少，但它们的表现要好很多。而且，越来越多的捐赠基金都开始采用“耶鲁模式”配置资产，即公开上市股票的持有占比下降，而这一点在捐赠基金界也已经不是什么秘密了。

    第三，过去5年哈佛实际上是提高了低流动性资产的目标敞口，包括私募股权和房地产。因此，现任管理层不仅批准了低流动性资产的转售(很可能卖早了），而且如果美国经济再次下滑，它可能会再次陷入类似的流动性危机。

    但上述这些因素似乎没有一个让哈佛管理公司的董事会感到担忧。或者，至少没有公开表露过忧虑。

    “我认为简建立的团队已经为成功做好了准备。5年后回头再看，我们认为她的工作非常出色，”哈佛管理公司董事格伦•哈钦斯表示，他同时也是私募股权公司银湖资本（Silver Lake）的联合创始人。

    我们未能联系到曼迪罗本人对本文发表评论。

    2. Harvard has much less exposure to domestic public equities than do many other endowments, which have been able to ride the recent bull run.

    3. Harvard has a particularly large slug of illiquid assets, some of which it felt compelled to sell at deep discounts during the financial crisis. Those sales continue to be a drag on five-year returns.

    Unfortunately, each of those arguments are easily countered. First, Harvard has always been the nation's largest endowment -- but it had little trouble outperforming in the past. For example, through June 30, 2012 it ranked #5 over a 20-year period.

    Second, it certainly is true that Harvard's rank has slipped due to its relative dearth of public equities. But other schools with even smaller public equity allocations -- such as Yale -- have performed much better. Moreover, it is no secret that more and more endowments have been adopting the "Yale model" of allocation, which means that public equity holdings actually have been decreasing over time, not increasing, in the broader endowment world.

    Third, Harvard has actually increased its target exposure to illiquid assets over the past five years, including in private equity and real estate. So not only did current management approve the secondary sale (arguably too soon), but it also may be setting itself up for a similar liquidity crunch were the economy to tank again.

    None of this, however, seems to be worrying the HMC board of directors. Or at least not openly.

    "I think that the team Jane has put in place is prepared to be very successful, and that we'll look back in five years and think she's done a terrific job," says HMC director Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of private equity firm Silver Lake.

    Mendillo was not made available for this story.