Columbia University's "Dinkinsgate Scandal" Connection--Part 10

After New York City voters decided in the 1993 mayoralty election that David Dinkins did not deserve a second term as New York City’s mayor, the Columbia University administration hired the local Democratic Party politician to be a professor “in the practice of public affairs” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. And during the last few years Columbia University Professor Dinkins (http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/dd98-fac.html ) has apparently attempted to use his remaining special political influence in New York City politics to help his private employer undemocratically implement its land-grabbing campus expansion plan north of West 125th Street in West Harlem, despite the objections of local community tenant activists. Not surprisingly, when Columbia University Professor Dinkins tried to sell Columbia University’s expansion plan to the 700 community residents who attended the local community board’s hearings in August 2007, the former New York City mayor was booed, hissed and shouted down by West Harlem residents and their Columbia and Barnard student supporters.

Following, is another section of an article on “The Dinkinsgate Scandal” which first appeared in the August/September 1991 issue of the Lower East Side newspaper, Shadow:

After his 1985 election as Manhattan Borough President, Columbia University Professor Dinkins transferred his 558 shares of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock to his son, David Dinkins, Jr. Although Dinkins told Newsday reporter Paul Moses in 1986 that the stock was given at “no charge,” a few years later he told a federal grand jury and a Special Deputy Commissioner investigating the stock transfer that he “sold” the stock to his son at a bargain-basement price.

In a 1991 telephone interview, Paul Moses stated that he stood by the accuracy of his September 26, 1986 Newsday article in which Dinkins said that he transferred his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock to his son “at no charge.” Moses was unwilling, however, to be interviewed by government investigators looking into the Dinkins stock transfer issue because he felt that speaking to government investigators in relation to a news story would compromise his integrity as a journalist.

The recipient of Dinkins’ stock transfer, David Dinkins, Jr., also refused to speak to Special Deputy Commissioner Elkan Abramowitz and his staff when they conducted their investigation of the Dinkins Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock transfer in 1990—although David Dinkins, Jr. was not a journalist. If David Dinkins, Jr. was actually given the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock by his father in late 1985 as a gift, then there’s a possibility that New York City’s former mayor should have been indicted both for apparently testifying falsely before a grand jury and for apparently failing to pay an appropriate gift tax on his Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stock transfer.

Next: Columbia University’s “Dinkinsgate Scandal” Connection—Part 11