The Same Old Faces

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Conclusion

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Getting...the White House, Soros said in 2003, became the `central focus' of his life. In July 2003, he convened Democratic activists and two political strategists, Mark Steitz and Tom Novick, at his summer estate in...Southampton, Long Island...The plan was about how Soros...could throw money--and a lot of it--into the political arena...

"...The second key part of the plan highlighted that...donors...could give money to...groups...Pushed by Jane Mayer in her New Yorker interview about the perceived hypocrisy of his spending large amounts of money on politics, Soros said, `...The ends justify every legal means possible.'

"Soros donated $5 million to MoveOn.org...He pledged money to America Coming Together, a group intended to mobilize voters in 17 swing states...He gave to the Center for American Progress...Altogether, Soros spent $27 million to...elect...John Kerry...The aforementioned 2004 New Yorker article on his spending was titled `The Money Man.' Jane Mayer conducted an interview with Soros over lunch at his Southampton estate...

"...Soros...supported NATO's military intervention, which did not have U.N. approval, in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s...Open Society had also been involved in Ukraine...Soros had been funding various civil society groups in Ukraine for a decade...George Soros...made money all over the world; he made...financial decisions that caused...average people to lose large amounts of money and private-equity funds he controlled used an offshore law firm Appleby...A 2017 article published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists...quoted Brooke Harrington, a Copenhagen Business School professor, as saying that the offshore industry makes `the poor pporer' and excerbates wealth inequality...

"...Soros...wants to be one of the people dictating the future of politics...Soros, through Open Society, does support NGOs...Soros was never elected...The NGOs he supports...are not accountable to the general public. Soros does have far more power than the average person, and his...work isn't bound by borders, and he did make his money as a speculator. All of that is true..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 10

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"A billionaire with so much money, accountable to no one, unelected by any people to any government...It is Soros, with all his money and all his power, who is picking people--like Licht, like Finci, like Trbic'--who are then...empowered...They were given power to advance their personal agendas...

"...It seemed wrong to me that one man from abroad could have such a large role in determining who in a society was able to have a voice and a platform and tremendous sums of money with which to execute an agenda...George Soros was not from Bosnia, or the former Yugoslavia, and yet had had power and influence in the society...And who is George Soros to decide that this is the issue on which...aid and attention should be spent? Why was George Soros essentially an actor in a civil war across the world? Who appointed him...?

"...The Charter 77 Foundation, which funded...Czeck and Slovak dissidents...was launched in Stockholm in the late 1970s. Soros, working with Czechs and Slovaks in exile, was, by his own admission, their main source of support..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 9

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Soros has justified speculation...The value of the baht plunged 32 percent against the dollar, and millions of Thai people lost their livelihoods. The Soros fund made $750 million...The Thai financial crisis sspread, becoming the Asia financial crisis, and Soros was blamed...At the 1997 World Bank and International Monetary Fund [IMF] meetings, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahather Mohamad called Soros a `criminal'...and claimed that he...caused the crash of the Malaysian ringgit...Soros...shorted the British pound...He and his employees helped trigger the Asian financial crisis..

.

"`The industry in which he made his money is an industry whose norms and rules have generally served to disenfranchise regular people over the last thirty, forty years,' said Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, a look at the way in which the very wealthy use philanthropy to protect the status quo and paper over problems they themselves have created, in a September 2019 phone interview...

"Soros...was still participating in a system that actively disenfranchises people...Soros...worked in finance in such a way that it broke countries' currencies..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 8

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"By the 1990s, there were enough foundations established that Soros's work evolved into a network. The staff in New York was growing...and Soros ended up opening an office space on Seventh Avenue...By 1994, when [Journalist Michael] Lewis traveled with Soros through Eastern Europe, Soros was dining with multiple presidents in one day and told his interlocutor, `Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.'...

"Soros said...`As a hedge fund manager I...tried to maximize my profits'...In October [1991],..The Daily Mail ran a photo of Soros with the headline, `I Made A Billion Crashing the Pound.'...Soros said that [Soros's] Quantum and its offshoots had bet...ten billion dollars against sterling, and that...speculation had gotten roughly two billion dollars in profits.

"Invisible investors like Soros, owing no allegiance as citizens, could place bets big enough to change economic outcomes for entire nations,' Martin Vander Weyer, business editor of The Spectator, wrote for The Telegraph in 2012...A country was thrown into economic chaos...And this happened at least in part because Soros saw an opportunity to make a lot of money...Soros...wanted his empire to be grand and global..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 7

 In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...Geza Jeszenskzky, who was minister of foreign affairs for Jozsef Antall...prime minister of Hungary, told me over email that Soros offered to settle Hungary's national debt in echange for stake in Hungary's state-owned companies. Jeszenskzky remembers the meeting as being in the fall of 1989 `at what was then called Hotel Novotel near the Southern Railway Terminal'...

"In addition to giving out scholarships, one of the Hungarian Soros Foundation's first projects was to offer photocopiers to institutions...Soros provided...many photocopiers...It was subversive--Soros was, in effect, funding underground...information...It was their first real, successful foray into philanthropy as subversion...Gabor Horn...in the late 1980s and early 1990s, received support from Soros as a representative of an independent labor union...

"The Soros Foundation was not the only institution to support...opposition movements, as Timothy Garton Ash...a professor of European studies at Oxford, told...over the phone from the United Kingdom...He got to know Soros `fairly quickly' because he was traveling around...Eastern Europe in the 1980s writing for the New York Review of Books. He described Soros as a `very important supporter of...opposition movements'...There were others involved, like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was not just Soros.

"But Soros was indeed there supporting these opposition groups, including that group...Fidesz...Fidesz transformed from a youth organization to a political party..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 6 `

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"Philanthropy...is effectively a legal form of tax evasion, and Soros is one of many wealthy people who have set up charitable trusts or philanthropic organizations...toward these ends. Those with enough money can use it...to hold on to their money for themselves and their heirs...Soros...by his own admission...first set up a charitable...trust to keep money in the family and hand less of it over to the state for redistribution...

"...In 1980, he turned to...awarding scholarships to dissidents in Eastern Europe...He also began directly financially supporting dissident movement like Solidarity in Poland.., Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia (a group led by intellectuals), and Andrei Sakharov's...movement in Soviet Russia. The idea that Soros has...funded groups that worked against the ruling government or parties is not...untrue...

"...The Soros Foundation in Hungary, once established, continued to operate on a somewhat slective and secretive basis...From its earliest days, there was--by design--comething secretive about how George Soros gave the money away..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 5

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"...Soros...set up his own hedge fund in 1973. His fund was called the Soros Fund. He brought along Jim Rogers...They opened an office on Columbus Circle, not far from Soros's home at the time at 25 Central Park West. In 1978, the fund changed its name to Quantum Fund...(...around the time that Rogers left the fund.).

"By 1981, the fund had...assets worth $381 million. Soros had a personal fortune of $100 million...Soros said that his financial strategy was informed by his philosphy...When he believed there was opportunity ahead, he went in for the kill. In 1973, for example, the Arab-Israeli War had shifted tectonic plates in the defense industry...Soros...bought defense stocks and made money...

"...Soros met Susan Weber, twenty-five years his junior...in 1978, the same year he left Witschak, the two married in 1983...the same year of his first divorce...

"In 1979, Soros established The Open Society Fund as a charitable lead trust. His motives were not entirely altruistic. `A charitable lead trust is a very interesting tax gimmick.'.., he explained in the early 2000s...'...The principal that remains can be left [to one's heirs] without estate or gift tax. So this was the way I set up the trust for my children.'..."

Revisiting Emily Tamkin's `The Influence Of Soros' 2020 Book: Pt. 3

 

In her 2020 book, The Influence Of Soros, a U.S. senior editor of New Statesman magazine, Emily Tamkin, noted:

"It is...an understatement to say that George Soros is influential in politics. In 2004, he threw his financial weight behind then-Senator John Kerry in the hope of defeating the incumbent president...Soros is still, to this day, a political backer...In July 2019, he created a PAC for the 2020 election called Democracy PAC and promptly put $5.1 million into it..

"Gyorgy Schwartz...was born in 1930 in Budapest...It was not until 1936 that Gyorgy Schwartz became a Soros...George Soros's father, Tivadar Soros (born Tivadar Schwartz), was a lawyer...Tivadar would not have his family use an obviously Jewish name. In 1936, Schwartz became Soros...

"Tivadar Soros...was of a certain socioeconomic class and had the means to save himself...His...plan was to obtain documents from Christians...He did for..his younger son, who hid out as Sandor Kiss...

"George Soros as Sandor Kiss hid out with...a Ministry of  Agriculture employee. Tivadar Soros paid the man to take...George in and pretend he was his godson..

"...In 1998, Steve Kroft, interviewing George Soros on 60 Minutes, noted that Tivadar Soros had `bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson,' adding `as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps...George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.'..For some people...Lajos Ozme...for example--Tivadar Soros charged quite a lot to obtain false documents...

"...George Soros found life in socialist Hungary constricting...By 1947, Soros...decided to go to England...He got on the train without his permit..." 

George Philanthropist--Bob A. Feldman

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Conclusion

 

Russell Sage Foundation headquarters building at 112 East 64th Street in Manhattan

Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Jason Furman has been sitting next to former Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Dean Lemann on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees (that Columbia Provost Katznelson sat on between 1992 and 2002), since November 2018. And, according to the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University website, Russell Sage Trustee Furman worked “eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including serving as…Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017”—during a period of U.S. economic history when public funds were used by the Obama Administration to bail out for-profit Wall Street banks, U.S. unemployment rates exceeded 6 percent for many years, and economic inequality in the USA continued to increase.

As the same website recalled, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee “Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration;” and, in addition, Trustee Furman also, previously, “worked at both the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration” in the 1990’s and “also at the World Bank.”

Coincidentally, according to the Upper West Side-based Columbia University’s, “Columbia World Project” website, “Columbia World Project” also operates “the Obama Foundation Scholars Program;” and  a photograph and biography of Russell Sage Foundation President Sheldon Danziger are, also coincidentally, posted on Columbia’s “Columbia World Project” website page.

Like “non-profit” Columbia Univesity, the Columbia-linked Russell Sage Foundation may still not be paying a fair share of New York City taxes in 2021. Yet, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, besides paying Russell Sage Foundation President Danziger a total annual compensation of between $594,000 and $623,000, the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation also paid total annual compensations to the “non-profit” foundation’s administrators that were a lot more than the total annual compensations that most essential workers in the Big Apple are paid each year. For example:

1. Russell Sage Foundation Assistant Treasurer William Moon was paid a total annual compensation of over $301,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019;

2. Russell Sage Foundation Program Director Aixa Cintron-Velez was paid a total annual compensation of over $251,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019;

3. Russell Sage Foundation Program Director James Wilson was paid a total annual compensation of over $250,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019;

4. Russell Sage Foundation Program Director of Communication David Haproff was paid a total annual compensation of over $236,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019;

5. Russell Sage Foundation Director of Administration Ivan Ramos was paid a total annual compensation of over $232,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019;

6. Russell Sage Foundation Director of Publications Suzanne Nichols was paid a total annual compensation of over $230,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019; and

7. Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees Secretary Claire Gabriel was paid a total annual compensation of over $222,000 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019.

And besides having a board of trustees which interlocks with the boards of even wealthier foundations, that also obtain their “charitable” grant money from investments in for-profit corporations which exploit essential workers and consumers, the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation also apparently “enters into research collaboration with a number of other foundations;” and its “co-funders” include the Carnegie Corporation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, according to its website. In addition, the Russell Sage Foundation also “partners” with the Gates Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

But if it’s a violation of U.S. anti-trust laws for U.S. business firms in a particular industry to collaborate or conspire with, purportedly separate, business firms to exploit U.S. consumers, why isn’t it a violation of U.S. anti-trust laws for U.S. foundations in the “philanthropy industry” to collaborate with, purportedly separate, foundations--to undemocratically determine how the money they obtain, from investments in corporations that exploit essential workers and consumers, is to be distributed?

One reason the New York Times might not be interested in either raising this question or providing New York Times or Upper West Side Patch readers with the answer to the above question, however, might be because—coincidentally—as a press release that was posted on the Russell Sage Foundation’s website on June 21, 2020  noted:

“The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of David Leonhardt…to its board of trustees effective at its November 2020 board meeting. David Leonhardt is an American journalist and columnist at The New York Times.  He writes The Morning Briefing newsletter, covering the day’s biggest news and cultural developments, and contributes occasionally to the Sunday Review.  Leonhardt has worked at the Times since 1999…He also served as the Times’ Washington bureau chief from 2011-2013…”

(end of article) (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 12

 

Columbia U.-linked Russell Sage Foundation board has been interlocked with board of Carnegie Corp. of NY, as well as boards of MacArthur Foundation and WGBH media organization since 2020. 

Besides sitting next to former Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemann since 2016 on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees that Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Katznelson sat on between 1992 and 2002, MacArthur Foundation board member and Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Martha Minow also began sitting on the board of trustees of Greater Boston’s PBS television and NPR radio station, WGBH, in September 2017.

Coincidentally, prior to Russell Sage Foundation Trustee and MacArthur Foundation Director Minow joining the corporate underwritten, foundation-subsidized and publicly-funded Corporate for Public Broadcasting’s WGBH board of trustees in 2017, WGBH had been given four “charitable” grants, totaling over $6.8 million, by the “philanthropic”  MacArthur Foundation since Minow first began sitting on the MacArthur Foundation board in January 2012—including a tax-exempt $4.2 million “charitable” grant in 2015 “for unrestricted support of its project FRONTLINE.”

And, also coincidentally, after Russell Sage Trustee and MacArthur Foundation board member Minow joined the WGBH board of trustees, the “philanthropic” MacArthur Foundation gave another “charitable” grant of $600,000 to WGBH “in support of WORLD Channel’s documentary production” in 2018.

In addition, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee and MacArthur Foundation board member Minow also sat on the board of directors of the for-profit CBS media conglomerate at the same time she was sitting on the publicly-funded WGBH media organization’s board of trustees between 2017 and December 2019, when CBS Corporation’s merger with Viacom to form ViacomCBS was finalized.

And, as a Bloomberglaw.com article by Brian Baxter, titled “ViacomCBS Paid Nearly $20 Million to Top Lawyers in 2019”, that was posted on Apr. 8, 2020 noted, Russell Sage and WGBH Trustee and MacArthur Foundation Director Minow “who previously served on the board of CBS, earned $465,053 in total compensation from ViacomCBS” in 2019; before this trustee of the philanthropic Russell Sage foundation and non-profit WGBH media organization “stepped down from the” CBS Corporation “board in December” 2019  “when the ViacomCBS merger was finalized. “

Coincidentally, former CBS and current WGBH, MacArthur Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation board member Minow has also been sitting since June 2020 on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation (whose assets exceeded $3.5 billion in 2020).

And, not surprisingly, two “charitable” grants, totaling $1.5 million, were received by the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation (whose former board of trustees chair is Columbia Provost Katznelson and current board of trustees vice-chair is former Columbia Journalism School Dean Lemann) from the “philanthropic” Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation since 2016, including a tax-exempt grant of $500,000 that was given to the Russell Sage Foundation in 2020—the same year that Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow also became a member of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corporation, whose headquarters are located at 437 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

And, in addition, the Upper West Side’s Columbia University and Teachers College of Columbia University were given five grants in 2020, totaling over $950,000, by the Carnegie Corporation, including a “charitable” grant of $413,400 “for continuing to digitize the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s historical records” that will only be “available to the public after an applicable embargo time” and a “charitable” grant of $175,000 “for core support of The Hechinger Report”—after Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow began sitting on the “philanthropic” Carnegie Corporation’s board in 2020.

(end of part 12. To be continued).(This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 11

 

Columbia-Linked Russell Sage Foundation interlocked to MacArthur Foundation that helps fund Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

The Columbia University provost who failed to immediately meet the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW 2110 union during its 2021 strike at the Upper West Side university, 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson, also sat on the Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees between 1992 and 2002.

And since 2016, a member of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation board of directors since 2012, Harvard Law School Professor and former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, has also been sitting on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees—whose current vice-chair is Columbia Graduate of Journalism Professor and former Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemann.

 

Before joining the board of the “non-profit” MacArthur Foundation (whose assets now exceed $7 billion) in 2012, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow was also a MacArthur Foundation “consultant” between 2001 and 2008; while the current MacArthur Foundation president, former Harvard Law School Professor and current Knight Foundation board member John Palfrey, was the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University’s executive director between 2002 and 2008. As the Berkman Klein Center’s website noted in an article, titled “John Palfrey takes over the MacArthur Foundation as its sixth president”, which was posted on Sept. 23, 2019:

“John Palfrey, the Berkman Klein Center’s executive director from 2002-2008, spoke with The Harvard Gazette about his new position as the president of the MacArthur Foundation.

  

“`At the Berkman Klein Center we were grantees of the MacArthur Foundation. That was certainly a way we got to know…the foundation…The foundation supported our work…,’ Palfrey said.

 `…To have been a grantee…that was hugely helpful in thinking how one would help to lead a philanthropic organization.’”

And, coincidentally, since former Harvard Law School Dean and current Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow joined the MacArthur Foundation’s board, the Berkman Klein Center, “which reports to both the Provost of Harvard University and the Dean at Harvard Law School and is administratively housed at Harvard Law School” according to its website, has been given 6 “charitable” grants, totaling over $1 million, by the “philanthropic” MacArthur Foundation—although “the Berkman Klein Center does not award degrees or offer courses.”

In 2015, for example a “charitable” grant of $600,000 was given to the Berkman Klein Center by the MacArthur Foundation “in support of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s research focused on data governance, transparency and countering hate speech;” purportedly “in order to protect freedom of expression.”

So, not surprisingly, “non-profit” Harvard University’s Berkman Klein center, which the MacArthur Foundation has helped fund while Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow has sat on the MacArthur Foundation’s board, posted a press release on its website on Dec. 5, 2018 which stated:

“Today the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University announced that Martha Minow…brings her broad expertise and experience to its Board of Directors…Martha Minow has been a long-time…supporter of the Berkman Klein Center...

“`We are so grateful for Martha’s continued…contributions…and are thrilled to collaborate even more closely together over the years to come as she joins the Board,’ said Urs Gasser, the Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center…

“Minow is the latest addition to the Board of Directors, which shape the Berkman Klein Center’s overreaching vision and direction. The Board determines financial, research, academic, personnel, governance, and other key organizational decisions…”

Yet although the Berkman Klein Center, on whose board Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Minow sits, claims to be a “non-profit” organization, Berkman Klein Center Executive Director and Harvard Law School Professor Urs Gasser (who announced in April 2021 that he will be leaving his executive director position for a different job in Europe) has also apparently been the “Non-Executive Chairman” of the xUpery Ltd. “consulting firm” in Switzerland, whose corporate board of directors includes Domino Burki, a Managing Partner of DuLac Capital Ltd.

And, according to its website, DuLac Capital Ltd. offers “traditional as well as non-traditional investment management services,” has “a profound expertise in the areas of private equity and corporate finance,” and “due to” its “strategic cooperation with xUpery Ltd., a consulting and investment boutique headquartered in Zurich, we have a strong focus on investment opportunities in the context of digital transformations.”

In addition, according to the xUpery Ltd. website, the “consulting” firm of the soon-to-be departing Berkman Klein Center Executive Director Gasser “is an international consulting investment company specializing in digital transformation” that “invests in entrepreneurs who develop digital and digitedly-enable technologies” whose “markets include…media and entertainment” and “healthcare and financial industry; and Harvard Law School Professor Gasser’s xUpery Ltd. “predominantly provides seed (including startup and early stage) funding through its network of…investors, typically in exchange for equity ownership.”

In an April 16, 2021 email, this writer asked Harvard Law School Professor and xUpery Ltd. “Non-Executive Chairman” Gasser (who has also been a member of the German government’s Digital Council in recent years),  how he “would respond to Upper West Side Patch readers who might possibly assert that the MacArthur Foundation has inappropriately helped fund a Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, whose recently resigned executive director was apparently inappropriately involved in a `strategic cooperation’ with DuLac Capital Ltd., while also being a member of the German government's Digital Council, in recent years?”

But ‘non-profit” Harvard Law School’s departing Berkman Klein Center executive director-- on whose board of directors Russell Sage Foundation Trustee, MacArthur Foundation board and former Harvard Law School Dean Minow still sits—did not reply to this writer’s email.

 

Also, coincidentally, after MacArthur Foundation board member Minow began sitting next to former Columbia Journalism School Dean Lemann on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in January 2016, the “philanthropic” MacArthur Foundation gave a “charitable” grant of $1,750,000 in 2017 to the Department of Sociology of Columbia University “in support of the executive session on the future of justice policy as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge” and a “charitable” grant of $850,000 in 2018 to “non-profit” Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism “in support of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.”

(end of part 11. To be continued) (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russelll Sage Foundation Connection: Part 10

 

Foundation, on whose board successor to Columbia provost as Social Science Research Council president, and a Russell Sage Foundation trustee, also sat in 2020.

Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson’s successor as Social Science Research Council president, former Columbia Professor of Sociology and “Dean of Social Science” Alondra Nelson, was also “tapped” to sit on the Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees (that Columbia Provost Katznelson sat on between 1992 and 2002) in June of 2020—less than 5 months after she was “tapped” to sit on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s board of trustees in late January 2020.

In addition, besides sitting next to Hall Capital Partners LLC Founder and Co-Chair Kathryn A. Hall, former Tishman Speyer Senior Managing Director Katherine G. Farley, Canyon Partners LLC Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO Joshua S. Friedman and Lone Pine Capital Managing Director and Portfolio Manager Kelly Grant on the Mellon Foundation’s board of trustees, Columbia Provost Katznelson’s successor as Social Science Research Council president also sat next to Duke University President Emeritus Richard H. Brodhead and Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway on the Mellon Foundation’s board.

And, coincidentally, like institutionally racist and classist Columbia University, both “non-profit” Duke University and “non-profit” Rutgers University have been given “charitable” grants in recent years by the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation—whose board includes a Duke University president emeritus and the current president of Rutgers University.

Between March 15, 2018 and March 12, 2021, for example, the university that Mellon Foundation Trustee Brodhead is president emeritus of, institutionally racist and classist Duke University, was given 7 grants by the Mellon Foundation, totaling over $5.2 million, including:  a “charitable” grant of $698,000 on March 15, 2018 for “Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement;” another “charitable” grant of $3 million ($3,000,000) on March 15, 2018 “to support the Humanities Unbounded Institute;” a “charitable” grant of $630,000 on March 12, 2021 “to support an intergenerational project archiving and documenting contemporary activism;” and another “charitable” grant of $300,000 on March 12, 2021 “to support a New Directions Fellowship for Tsitsi Jaji” (a Duke University Associate Professor of English), according to the Mellon Foundation’s website.

And since 2018 the university that Mellon Foundation Trustee Holloway is president of, institutionally racist and classist Rutgers University, has been given over $21.2 million by the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation, including: a “charitable” grant of $300,000 on March 6, 2019 “to support a New Directions Fellowship for Susanna Schellenberg,” a Rutgers University professor of philosophy and cognitive science; and a “charitable grant of $15 million ($15,000,000) on Sept. 18, 2020, “to support the establishment of an institute for the advanced study of race and social justice”--which, according to the institutionally racist and classist Mellon Foundation’s president, former Columbia University Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities Elizabeth Alexander, purportedly “seeks to resolve global racism and injustice through the power of humanistic inquiry,” rather than through systematic revolutionary institutional change.

But, as a Sept. 24, 2020 Rutgers University press release indicated, this $15 million “charitable” grant from the Mellon Foundation “will support and amplify the scholarship of researchers who are based in the humanities” and “will provide opportunities for Rutgers faculty” at a university whose president is, coincidentally, a member of the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation board of trustees.

The Manhattan-based “non-profit” Mellon Foundation which, like the Upper West Side-based Columbia University, still fails to pay a fair share of NYC, state and federal taxes in 2021, also paid total annual compensations to its executives in 2018 that were a lot more than the total annual compensations most essential workers in NYC were paid in 2018.

According to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, for example, between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2018 the “non-profit” Mellon Foundation paid Mellon Foundation Senior Portfolio Manager Monica C. Spencer a total annual compensation of over $993,000 and paid Mellon Foundation Senior Portfolio Manager Karen Grieb Inal a total annual compensation of over $713,000.

In addition, Mellon Foundation Portfolio Manager Abigail Archibald was paid a total annual compensation of over $581,000 and Mellon Foundation CFO Thomas J. Sanders was paid a total annual compensation of over $539,000 in 2018 by the Mellon Foundation. And Mellon Foundation Senior Program Officer Diane S. Harris was paid a total annual compensation of over $500,000 (including a $60,000 annual expense account) during this same period, by the “non-profit” Mellon Foundation.

But although the Mellon Foundation claims to be a “philanthropic” organization, much of the money it utilizes to give “charitable” grants to Columbia, Duke and Rutgers and pay generous salaries to its own executives is obtained from the interest and dividends it receives each year from owning corporate stocks or corporate bonds in corporations that exploit essential workers and consumers.

In 2019, for example, over $3.5 million worth of Wal-Mart corporate stock was owned by the Mellon Foundation—on whose board of trustees Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage “Olivia Sage Scholar” Katznelson’s successor as Social Science Research Council president, as well as a Russell Sage Foundation trustee in 2020, also sat in 2020.

(end of part 10. To Be continued). (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 9

 

Headquarters at 140 E. 62nd. St. in Manhattan of "non-profit" Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, whose board of trustees included Russell Sage Foundation trustee and ex-Columbia professor in 2020.

In January 2020 the former Columbia professor of sociology and Columbia “Dean of Social Science” who succeeded Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Katznelson as the Social Science Research Council’s president, Alondra Nelson, became a trustee of the Manhattan-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

And by November 2020 Social Science Research Council President and Mellon Foundation Trustee Nelson was also apparently sitting on the board of trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation (where Columbia Provost Katznelson sat between 1992 and 2002)—next to former Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean and Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees Vice-Chair Nicholas Lemann.

Coincidentally, between March 5, 2020 and Dec. 11, 2020, the Columbia University and Teachers College of Columbia University “non-profit” institutions on the Upper West Side received 4 “charitable” grants, totaling over $5.7 million, from the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation, on whose board of trustees the Social Science Research Council president now sat, according to the Mellon Foundation’s website.

On March 5, 2020, for example, the Mellon Foundation gave a tax-exempt grant of $250,000 to Columbia University “to support a New Directions Fellowship for Rhiann Stephens,” who (according to Columbia University’s website) was an “On Leave Associate Professor of History” during the 2020-2021 academic year.

In addition, on Sept. 18, 2020 the Mellon Foundation gave a “charitable” grant of $500,000 to Teachers College of Columbia University “to support a study on guided transfer pathways in the humanities.” And on Dec. 11, 2020, institutionally racist Columbia University was given a “charitable” grant of 5 million dollars ($5,000,000) by the “non-profit” Mellon Foundation for “Racial Justice and Abolition Democracy: An Action Curriculum for a Just Society.”

According to its website, the Mellon Foundation, whose headquarters is located at 140 East 62nd Street (just two blocks south of the Columbia-linked Russell Sage Foundation’s headquarters building on East 64th Street), “was created in 1969 with $273 million in assets.”

Yet despite purportedly being a “non-profit institution, by 1970 the Mellon Foundation “had assets of $700 million” and “by 1980, the last year the Foundation received a payout from Alisa Mellon Bruce’s estates, its assets had grown to $880 million.” In addition, according to the “non-profit” Mellon Foundation’s website, by the end of 2019 “its endowment” now “totaled approximately $6.9 billion."

At the same time, even 7 years after the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation received its payout from Alisa Mellon Bruce’s estate, “much of the Mellon fortune,” was still “in the hands of the six grandchildren of Richard B. Mellon and the three grandchildren of Andrew W. Mellon,” according to Michael Patrick Allen’s 1987 book The Founding Fortunes: A New Anatomy of the Super-Rich Families In America.

The “stock in the original Mellon companies” owned by the family nearly 20 years after the Mellon Foundation was created was “now worth $1.1 billion” in the late 1980’s; and “in addition,” the Mellon family’s “proceeds from various stock sales” came to “over $3.2 billion, most of this from their Gulf Oil stock,” as well as “$2.1 billion in dividend income” between 1937 and 1987, “from their stocks in Gulf Oil, Aluminum Company of America [ALCOA] and Mellon National alone.” So that, nearly 20 years after the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation was created, the Mellons were still “worth at least $6 billion [equal to over $13.8 billion in 2021 dollars]," according to the same book.

 Mellon Foundation trustees (like Social Science Research Council President Nelson became in 2020) were being paid $20,000 to $25,000 annually by this foundation in 2015, according to the Mellon Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2015-- for the 3 to 5 hours they purportedly spent each week working for this foundation. And according to the same Form 990 financial filing, the then-Mellon Foundation president, Earl Lewis, was paid a total annual compensation of nearly $1 million in 2015, including an expense account of $150,000.

Coincidentally, the current Mellon Foundation president, Elizabeth Alexander, “was the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University from 2015 until joining the Foundation in 2018,” according to the Mellon Foundation’s website. And, not surprisingly, in 2018 and 2019, the “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation gave “non-profit” Columbia University 12 tax-exempt grants, totaling over $9.6 million.

On March 15, 2018, for example, the Mellon Foundation gave Columbia University a “charitable” grant of $1,123,000 for “Establishing a Fellowship Program for Emerging Displaced Scholars at the Columbia Global Center in Amman;” and on May 31, 2018, the Mellon Foundation gave a “charitable” grant of $900,000 to Columbia University “for Liberal Arts Index."

In addition, on Dec. 13, 2018, the Mellon Foundation gave a “charitable” grant of $800,000 to Columbia University for “The Center for Science and Society, Phase II” and a “charitable” grant of $750,000 to Columbia for “The Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University” to do research “on conflict urbanism.” 

But between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2018, the “non-profit” Mellon Foundation also collected over $23.2 million in net dividends and interest from the corporate stocks and bonds it owned of for-profit corporations that exploit essential workers and consumers; and it also gained $455 million from the sale of some of its over $6 billion in assets during this period, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, while spending over $7.7 million of the foundation’s revenues on paying for “investment management.”

Between Jan. 1, 2018 and Dec. 31, 2018, for example, over $2.4 million was “given” to Silchester International Investors Inc., over $1.8 million was “given” to the General Atlantic Service Company LLC, over $1.3 million was “given” to Wellington Management, over $1.2 million was” given” to JP Morgan Investment Management Inc. and over $880,000 was “given” to Westwood Global Investment LLC, by the Columbia University, Social Science Research Council and Russell Sage Foundation-linked “philanthropic” Mellon Foundation—for “investment management.”

(end of part 9. To be continued) (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).  

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 7

 

19th-Century U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould's business partner, Russell Sage--from whose inherited wealth Russell Sage Foundation's endowment was obtained.

The Columbia provost who failed to immediately agree to meet the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW 2110 union during its 2021 strike at the Upper West Side university, Ira Katznelson, and former Columbia Provost Claude Steele, are not the only Russell Sage Foundation trustees who ever received “charitable” grants from this foundation before they sat on the “philanthropic” foundation’s board of trustees.

Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Larry M. Bartels has been sitting next to former Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Dean, current Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company board member and Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees Vice-Chair Nicholas Lemann on the Russell Sage Foundation board since 2013.

And besides being paid $8,000 by the Russell Sage Foundation between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 (according to the foundation’s Form 990 financial filing) for sitting on its board, before joining the Russell Sage Foundation’s board Trustee Bartels received 4 grants from the Russell Sage Foundation between 2001 and 2010, including a “charitable” grant of $8,500 in March 2002 for a “Conference on Trust in Government" and a grant of $29,600 in November 2010.

In addition, when former Columbia Provost Steele was sitting on both the MacArthur Foundation board of directors and the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in 2012, a MacArthur Foundation grant was, coincidentally, given to Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Bartels a year before he joined the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in 2013.

Another Russell Sage Foundation trustee, who has been sitting on its board of trustees next to former Columbia School of Journalism Dean Lemann since 2012, is Karen S. Cook; and, like Trustee Bartels, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Cook received “charitable” grants from the foundation before joining its board of trustees.

Between 1994 and 2009, Trustee Cook received at least 7 tax-exempt grants from the Russell Sage Foundation, totaling over $500,000: a $20,000 grant between 1994 and 1996 for workshops on “The Construction and Maintenance of Trust”; a $120,000 grant between 1995 and 1998 for a working group proposal on “The Construction and Maintenance of Trust;”; a $24,500 grant in November 1999 to study “Reciprocal Trust in Patient-Physician Relationships: Managing the Transition from Individual to Group Trust;” a $300,000 grant between 1999 and 2004 for “The Construction and Maintenance of Trust: Continuation Grant Project Proposal;” a $25,000 “Physician-Patient Trust” exploratory grant between 2000 and 2002; a $5,000 “Physician-Patient Trust” supplemental grant in 2002;  and a $35,000 “Trust Capstone Volume Grant” grant between 2007 and 2009. And between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, Trustee Cook was also paid $9,610 by the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation for sitting on its board of trustees.

Before joining former Columbia School of Journalism Dean Lemann on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in 2013, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Kathryn Edin (who was paid $7,715 between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 for sitting on its board of trustees) also received a 1991-1992 grant, a 1991-1993 grant, a 1998-2000 grant, a 2000-2003 grant and  a 2003-2005 grant from the Russell Sage Foundation; and during the 1992-1993 academic year was also a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar.”

And, coincidentally, the MacArthur Foundation, on whose board former Columbia Provost and former Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees Chair Steele has sat since 2008, also gave Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Edin a 2009-2014 MacArthur Foundation grant and a 2014-2015 MacArthur Foundation grant (at the same time MacArthur Foundation grant recipient Edin was sitting next to MacArthur Foundation board member Steele on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees).

In addition, Trustee Edin has also received a 2019-2021 grant from U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation, while sitting on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees (around the same time the Russell Sage Foundation, itself, received a tax-exempt “contribution” of over $1.3 million from the Gates Foundation).

Russell Sage Foundation Trustees David Laibson and Hazel Rae Markus also received grants from the Russell Sage Foundation in the years before they joined the “philanthropic” foundation’s board of trustees. Trustee Laibson was given a “charitable” Russell Sage Foundation grant in 2010; while Trustee Markus received a 1998 to 2000 grant, a 2000 to 2003 grant, a 2000 grant and a 2002 to 2004 grant from the Russell Sage Foundation and was its 2018-2019 “Margaret Olivia Sage Visiting Scholar,” before becoming a Russell Sage Foundation trustee.

In addition, a 2016 to 2018 MacArthur Foundation “charitable” grant was given to Trustee Markus by the MacArthur Foundation, when former Columbia Provost and MacArthur Foundation board member Steele and MacArthur Foundation board member Martha Minow both also sat together on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees.

And, coincidentally, when current Columbia Provost Katznelson was still a Russell Sage Foundation trustee, the current chair of the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees (who received $11,000 from the Russell Sage Foundation between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 for sitting on its board), Michael Jones-Correa, was a 1998-1999 “Visiting Scholar” of the Russell Sage Foundation; while the Russell Sage Foundation’s current president and trustee (whose photograph and bio are posted on Columbia’s “Columbia World Project” website page), Sheldon Danziger, was a 2002-2003 “Visiting Scholar” of the Russell Sage Foundation, whose 1993, 2007, 2009 and 2013 books that he edited were also published—by the “philanthropic” and “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation.

(end of part 7. To be continued). (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website). 

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 5

Russell Sage Foundation headquarters building at 112 East 64th Street in Manhattan.

Columbia University Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson, who failed to immediately agree to meet the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia [GWC-UAW 2110] in that union’s three-week 2021 strike at the Upper West Side university, was the chair of the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees between 1999 and 2002. In addition, a former Columbia provost, Claude M. Steele, chaired the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees until a few years ago; and a former dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and current Columbia journalism school professor, Nicholas Lemann, is also currently the vice-chair of the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees.

But according to the “Conflict of Interest Policy” of the Russell Sage Foundation, “the Foundation may not approve or engage in…any arrangement that would constitute an act of `self-dealing.’” Yet in 2014, four years after Macarthur Foundation board member and former Columbia Provost Steele became a Russell Sage Foundation trustee in 2010 and two years before MacArthur Foundation board member Martha Minow became a Russell Sage Foundation trustee in 2016, the Russell Sage Foundation received and accepted a $350,000 tax-exempt “charitable” grant from the MacArthur Foundation “to research the cause and consequences of increasing social, economic, and political inequality.”

In response to an email query asking if the MacArthur Foundation awarded any grants to the Russell Sage Foundation between 2010 and 2020, when either MacArthur Foundation board member Martha Minow or MacArthur Foundation board member Claude M. Steele were also Russell Sage Foundation trustees—although, according to the Russell Sage Foundation’s “Conflict of Interest Policy,” the “Foundation may not approve or engage in…any arrangement that would constitute an act of `self-dealing.’”?, Russell Sage Foundation President Sheldon Danziger, in an Apr. 2, 2021 email to this writer, replied:

“It is not self-dealing for charitable foundations to collaborate with each other in awarding grants to third parties in furtherance of their respective charitable and educational missions. Self-dealing involves the use of foundation assets to benefit insiders to the foundation such as trustees and officers.

“The suggestion that it was self-dealing for the MacArthur Foundation to award a grant to RSF simply because an individual served on the boards of both foundations is fundamentally incorrect. The funds were granted to faculty researchers for social science research following a rigorous process of review.

“Since I became President of RSF in 2013, I have actively sought to collaborate with other foundations that have similar research interests in order to fund third party research that advances our respective missions.

“The RSF trustees do not initiate these co-funding proposals to other foundations, do not review them in advance of their submission (if at all) and do not derive any financial or other benefit from them.

“As I understand, the grant from the MacArthur Foundation was not approved at one of their board meetings because MacArthur program staff have authority to make certain awards without trustee approval. As a result there was no self-dealing and no conflict of interest.”

The “philanthropic” MacArthur Foundation (on whose board of directors former Columbia Provost Steele has sat since 2008) also, coincidentally, gave over $8.1 million in tax-exempt “charitable” grants to Columbia University between 2008 and 2020, including over $4 million in grants during the 2011 to 2020 period when MacArthur Foundation board member Steele also sat next to former Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean and current J-School Professor Lemann on the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees.

For example, the MacArthur Foundation gave a $230,000 grant to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism (when the Russell Sage Foundation’s current board of trustees vice-chair Lemann was still Columbia’s journalism school dean) “to study the online distribution efforts of magazines” in 2008. And when Lemann was still the dean of Columbia’s journalism school (and, along with MacArthur Foundation board member Steele, now a member of the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees), the MacArthur Foundation also gave Columbia’s journalism school a $35,000 grant in 2013 “to support the Columbia Journalism Review, for a project on understanding the news consumption habits of young adults.”

In addition, when MacArthur Foundation board members Steele and Minow both sat alongside the former dean of Columbia’s journalism school on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees between 2016 and 2020, the MacArthur Foundation gave a grant of $450,000 to Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism “to study how journalism and independent publishing are affected by the distribution of news content via social media channels” in 2016; and it gave an additional $850,000 tax-exempt  grant to Columbia’s journalism school “in support of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism” in 2018.

Other “charitable” grants given to Columbia since former Columbia Provost and former Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees chair Steele has been sitting on the MacArthur Foundation board have included: a grant of $3,625,000 in 2010 to Columbia’s School of Public Health “to support the research network of an Aging Society;” a grant of $50,000 in 2012 to Columbia University “to support the summer workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy;” a grant of $500,000 in 2013 to Columbia’s School of Public Health; a grant of $10,000 in 2014 to Columbia “to support the summer workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy;” a grant to $300,000 in 2015 to Columbia for “its international studies forum; “a grant of $50,000 in 2016 to Columbia “for the summer workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy;” and a tax-exempt “charitable” grant of $1,750,000 to Columbia University’s Department of Sociology “in support of the executive session on the future of justice policy as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge.”

(end of part 5. To be continued). (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).  

 

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 4

 

How U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould and business partner, Russell Sage, became rich from owning U.S. railroads in 19th-century.

The Russell Sage Foundation, whose board of trustees Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson (who failed to immediately agree to meet the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia [GWC-UAW 2110] in the union's 2021 strike at that Upper West Side university) chaired between 1999 and 2002, has a “Conflict of Interest Policy” posted on its website.

And according to this “Conflict of Interest Policy”, among “the requirements” governing “the activities” of its Trustees, the Trustees “may not be Visiting Scholars, Principal Investigators of a funded project, Authors/Editors of a Foundation book, or compensated participant in a funded project;” and “the Foundation may not approve or engage in any…arrangement that would constitute an act of `self-dealing.’” In addition, in an Apr. 2, 2021 email to this writer, Russell Sage Foundation President Sheldon Danziger stated the following:

“The Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees has a robust Conflict of Interest Policy and a Conflict of Interest Committee to ensure that the Foundation serves its mission to strengthen the methods, data and theoretical core of social sciences in order to better understand societal problems and develop informed responses. The Foundation and Committee take seriously any conflicts of interest and address them consistent with New York law and the laws and regulations governing exempt operating foundations.”

 

Yet, according to the CV that Russell Sage Foundation Trustee and Yale University Professor Jennifer Richeson posted on the internet, the Russell Sage Foundation gave her a grant of $163,531 to study “Sociostructural and psychological factors supporting the misperception of racial economic equality” in 2020-2021; although Professor Richeson has been sitting on the Columbia University-linked Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees since 2019.

In response to an email query asking why a grant of $163,551 was apparently awarded by the Russell Sage Foundation to Russell Foundation Trustee Richeson in 2020-2021 for a funded project, if, according to the foundation’s “Conflict of Interest Policy”, Trustees “may not be Visiting Scholars, Principal Investigators of a funded project, Author/Editors of a Foundation book, or compensated participant in a funded project” and “the Foundation may not approve or engage in any…arrangement that would constitute an act of `self-dealing’”, Russell Sage Foundation President Danziger, in his Apr. 2, 2021 email, replied:

“You have only quoted part of the Russell Sage Foundation’s Conflict of Interest Policy. The Policy provides that trustees `may not be…Principal Investigators of a funded project…unless such activity was initiated prior to his or her appointment’ as a trustee. The grant to Jennifer Richeson was initiated before she was invited to join or elected to the Board and was awarded without any input from her whatsoever.

“Furthermore, Ms. Richeson is not the Principal Investigator (PI) on the grant but a co-PI and receives no salary support under the grant. The proposal received very high reviews during the roughly six-month review process involved in approving such grants (which involves input from a panel of expert, independent evaluators), and the Board approved the proposal without the input or participation of Ms. Richeson. As a result, there was no conflict of interest, no financial benefit to Ms. Richeson, and no-self-dealing.”

Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Richeson was also a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar” in 2004, a member of a Russell Sage Foundation Working Group between 2010 and 2014 and a member of a Russell Sage Foundation Advisory Committee between 2016 and 2019; before joining the foundation’s board of trustees in 2019.

And, in addition to Trustee Richeson being given the $163,531 grant by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2020 (in which the Russell Sage trustee is described as a “Co-Principal Investigator” with M. Kraus PI, according to this trustee’s posted CV), Trustee Richeson was previously given a grant by the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation of $197,524 between 2002 and 2005 to study “intergroup contact: interpersonal and situational influence of dyadic interactions;” a grant of $174,953 between 2013 and 2014 to study “public views about inequality, opportunity and redistribution: evidence from media coverage and experimental inquiry;” and a grant of $114,316 between 2015 and 2018 to study “inequality, diversity and working-class attitudes.”

Besides receiving all this “charitable” grant money from the tax-exempt “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation since 2002, Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Richeson was also given a $500,000 individual “genius grant” by the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation in 2007. And, coincidentally, a former Columbia provost and former Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees chair and longtime trustee, Claude M. Steele, and a current Russell Sage Foundation trustee, Martha Minow, have been sitting on the MacArthur Foundation board of directors, since 2008 and 2012, respectively.

(end of part 4. To be continued). (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website)

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 3

 

Robber Baron Jay Gould's business partner, Russell Sage: His inherited wealth endowed Russell Sage Foundation

The former long-time Russell Sage Foundation trustee and current Columbia University provost (who failed to immediately agree to meet all of the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia [GWC-UAW 2110] during the 2021 strike by Columbia’s academic workers), 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson, may have claimed, historically, to be a supporter of the U.S. labor movement and U.S. working-class people.

Yet the Russell Sage Foundation is named for a super-rich U.S. capitalist who, by the time of his death in 1906, had accumulated an individual fortune of between $70 million and $100 million [equal to between $2 billion and $2.9 billion in 2021 U.S. dollars], by economically exploiting U.S. railroad workers, small farmers and, U.S. taxpayers, as well as by engaging in corporate stock and bond manipulation, in partnership with 19th-century U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould.

As Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais indicated in their Labor’s Untold Story book, by the late 1880’s, Jay Gould and Russell Sage “had owned and pillaged the Union Pacific, the Wabash, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, the Texas-Pacific, the Western Union Telegraph Company,…and a number of shorter Eastern railroads;” and it was their “practice to gain control of ruined railroads, usually through stock manipulation…, make a pretense of profitable operation, and then sell stocks and bonds based on that pretense before getting out just as the property failed again.” According, for example to Gustavus Myers’s History of the Great American Fortunes:

“Sage testified that he himself had begun buying Union Pacific stock in 1868 or 1869. One of the railroads that Gould, Sage…and their accessories bought as individuals, and then sold to themselves as directors of the Union Pacific, was the Kansas Pacific…Its chief assets were an issue of Government bonds, and a land grant of 3 million acres in Kansas and Colorado…In the juggling exchange of stocks and bonds and the fraudulent diversion of funds, they stole…more than $20,000,000 [equal to around $431 million in 2021 U.S. dollars]…The frauds of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, under the direction of Gould, Sage…were truly gigantic.

“Millions of acres of public land were stolen outright. No less than seven million acres were sold without any patent from the Government. Coal lands of inestimable value were fraudulently seized. Millions of dollars were fraudulently shuffled from one corporation to another…

“The Texas Pacific was one of the four main lines that Gould and Sage obtained control of by their well-known methods…Another of their lines was the Wabash, composed of…68 originally separate little railroads…Within 5 years of the time they gained hold of the Wabash, Gould and Sage had obtained a great series of privilege from various States, looted the railroads of millions of dollars, and then had thrown it into bankruptcy…Each new haul gave Gould and Sage a still greater supply of resources with which to manipulate other railroads and other public utility systems into their control…”

In addition, as the Internet Accuracy project noted, Russell Sage was also “a director of several New York banks, was a founding director of the Fifth Avenue Bank of New York City, and was president of New York's Standard Gaslight Company;” and he “was one of the largest stockholders of” of the “Manhattan Elevated Railway Company, Metropolitan Elevated Railway Company” and “many others.”

Gustavus Myers’s History of the Great American Fortunes book also recalled that, after holding a government position during the 1840’s in Troy (as an alderman of the Troy Common Council, until 1848) and occupying the Renssalaer County treasurer position in Upstate New York between 1844 and 1851 (before also being elected as an Upstate New York representative in the U.S. Congress between 1853 and 1857), Russell Sage had “gathered in his first notable amount of money.” He did so by “a transaction in which as a public official he betrayed the city of Troy into selling to himself for a small sum a railroad line” which “he later, according to a prearranged plan, sold to the New York Central consolidation at a very large profit.” And “there is nothing vague or conjectural regarding this…transaction” because “the facts are inscribed” in the “public record.”

At public expense, the City of Troy had built the 21-mile-long Troy & Schenectady Railroad in the early 1840’s to connect Troy, NY to Schenectady, NY. But later, in the early 1850’s, then-Renssalaer County Treasurer Sage persuaded the Troy Common Council (of which he had recently been a member) to sell its railroad line for $50,000 [equal to around $1.7 million in 2021 U.S. dollars] down, to a company headed by Sage; who then soon “sold it for $900,000 [equal to around $30.7 million in 2021 U.S. dollars] or so to a group of capitalists forming the New York Central Railroad combination.”

And Russell Sage also gained part of his excessive wealth from being a large stockholder in the 1860’s and 1870’s of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that “obtained by bribery” large U.S. government subsidies “for carrying the mails between San Francisco and Asia via Honolulu,” according to The History of the Great American Fortunes.

(end of part 3. To be continued). (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website)

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 2

 

Russell Sage Foundation headquarters building at 112 East 64th Street in Manhattan

The Russell Sage Foundation, whose board of trustees Columbia Provost Katznelson chaired between 1999 and 2002, claims to be a “non-profit” institution (despite it having an endowment of over $350 million in assets). But, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, the Russell Sage Foundation collected over $15.5 million in total revenues, including over $11.5 million from its net investment income; and also including over $1.3 million from a “charitable” contribution it received from U.S. Multi-Billionaire Oligarch Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation, during this same time period.

In addition, according to a financial statement that’s posted on its website, in 2020 the Russell Sage Foundation had total revenues exceeding $52.5 million. Yet “the Foundation is exempt from federal taxes,” “is classified as a private foundation” and “the Foundation is further classified as an exempt operating foundation, and is therefore exempt from federal excise taxes;” although “the Foundation is subject to income taxes…on income derived from private equity partnership investments.”

According to the same 2020 financial statement, less than $27 million, of the over $350 million that the Russell Sage Foundation endowment has invested in stocks and bonds of corporations that exploit workers and consumers around the globe, is invested in “private equity partnership investments.” But over $328 million of the Russell Sage Foundation endowment is invested in either a domestic equities fund, an international equities fund, a commingled international equities trust fund or mutual funds--which produce dividends and interest income for the foundation, yet is apparently not subject to federal income or federal excise taxes.

So, for example, the “philanthropic” Columbia University-linked Russell Sage Foundation paid its president, Sheldon Danziger, a total annual compensation of between $594,000 and $623,000, and gave him an expense account of over $84,000, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019; and, during the same period, it paid over $686,000 to firms like BlackRock and Silchester International Investors for “investment management services.” Yet the main tax that the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation (whose headquarters building is located at 112 East 64th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) paid between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 was a real estate tax of less than $30,000.

The Russell Sage Foundation, incidentally, “was started with a $10 million [equal to around $280 million in 2021]  bequest by Mrs. Sage in 1907,” as G. William Domhoff recalled in his 1970 book The Higher Circles: The Governing Class In America. But “philanthropist” Mrs. Sage was the second wife and widow of a long-time business partner of 19th-century U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould:  Russell Sage. And, according to Gustavus Myers’s A History of the Great American Fortunes, Russell Sage “had the reputation among the knowing of being an old hand at political and financial corruption.”

 (end of part 2. To be continued.) (This article was initially posted on the Upper West Side Patch website.)