Sunday, February 22, 2009

Who Rules NYU? NYU's Bank Leumi USA Connection

Besides sitting on the AIG Retirement Services corporate board in recent years, New York University [NYU] Trustee Lester Pollack has also sat between Conference of President of Major Jewish Organizations(lobbying group)Executive Vice-Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein and former Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinovich on the board of directors of Bank Leumi USA. In addition, an NYU College of Business & Public Administration Dean Emeritus, NYU Professor of Economics Abraham Gitlow, has also been an honorary director of Bank Leumi USA in recent years.

According to the Bank Leumi USA’s web site, “Bank Leumi USA is the largest subsidiary of the Leumi Group, Israel’s leading banking group, founded in 1902, with assets exceeding $86 billion” and “The Leumi Group serves clients around the world through more than 300 branches and offices...”

Among the other corporations or institutions on whose boards members of the NYU board of trustees have sat in recent years are: Bank of New York Mellon Corporation; Colgate Palmolive, Apollo Management; General Motors Asset Management; Temple Emanuel; Warburg Pincus; New York City Ballet; General Electric; Schering Plough; Paramount; CNA Financial; Comcast; Loew’s; Coca Cola; Washington Post Company/Newsweek; Seagram’s; Blackrock; PNC Financial Services; Home Depot; Center for Strategic and International Studies; The New York Stock Exchange; New School University; the New York City Police Foundation; and Human Rights Watch.

Who Ruled NYU In 1994?

Like New York University [NYU] in 1994, the University of California at the time of the Berkeley Student Revolt was controlled by super-rich folks whose special interests conflicted with the class interests of most Village Voice readers. As The Beginning: Berkeley, 1964 recalled:

“In the 1964-65 school year…the 24 members of the University of California’s Board of Regents had various connections with larger interests in the state and the nation. The board chairman was president of the largest chain of department stores in the West. Other members included the chairman of the Bank of America, the chairman of the nation’s largest gold-mining corporation, a vice-president of Lockheed…active in the California Manufacturer’s Association, the board chairman of two oil companies, the president of one of California’s largest food-processing concerns, a past chairman of the Republican State Central Committee…the wives of two of the state’s leading newspaper publishers, a past president of the state bar association…two corporation lawyers, and a former advertising executive. Members of the Board of Regents either headed or served on the boards of directors of 38 major corporations in the state and the nation…”

Similarly, among the corporations and institutions which were owned or directed by members of NYU’s Board of Trustees in the early 1990s were the Village Voice, Nation magazine, the New York Observer, the New York Daily News, CBS, Capital Cities Communication/ABC, Time Warner/Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Atlantic Monthly, Mobil Oil, Texaco, Getty Oil, Amerada Hess, Union Carbide, Chemical Bank, Bank Leumi Trust, NYNEX, Metropolitan Life Insurance, Borden, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Automatic Data Processing, Rockwell International, Paramount Communications, the New York Stock Exchange, Lazard Freres, Bear Stearns, Loew’s/Lorillard Tobacco, R.H. Macy’s, Hartz Mountain, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of NY and the NY Public Library.

(Downtown 9/21/94)