Columbia University's Public Health School and NYC's `Corona-Gates' Scandal: Part 4

Columbia U.'s Mailman School of Public Health: Renamed in exchange for $33 million from Mailman Foundation

Columbia U. School of Public Health’s Historical Mailman Foundation Connection

One reason Columbia University’s School of Public Health was re-named the “Mailman School of Public Health” in 1998 was that, in the words of a Sept. 4, 1998 Columbia University Record website article, “the largest single gift ever made to a school of public health,” as of that year (prior to the Gates Foundation's subsequent "charity grant" of $50 million in 1999 [equal to over $78 million in 2020]), of $33 million [equal to over $52 million in 2020], “was received” that “summer by the Columbia School of Public Health (CSPH) from the New York City-based Mailman Foundation, Inc.” According to the same 1998 article:

“The family-run Mailman Foundation, founded by the late Joseph Lawrence Mailman,…was made possible by his business success. He and his brother, Abraham, formed the Utica Knife and Razor Company, the Pal Blade Company, and later the Mailman Corporation, one of the earliest conglomerates in North America. In the course of his enterprising career, Mailman was president of the Persona Blade Company and the British Rubber Company and chairman of the board of Air Express International.”

Prior to resigning in 1984 as chairman of the then-biggest cargo forwarder at the JFK airport in NYC, Air Express International (whose annual revenues exceeded $250 million in 1983), Joseph Mailman and his family owned around 30 percent of Air Express International [AEI]’s stock. But on Oct. 19, 1981, Circuit Court Judges Godbold, Morgan and Henderson issued a decision in Air Express International’s appeal of a National Labor Relations Board decision which stated:

“We enforce the Board's order as relevant to the remainder of miscellaneous violations of the Act. Based on substantial evidence, the Board found that AEI discriminatorily threatened to withhold raises from some employees while granting and promising raises to others all in order to discourage union activity and weaken the pro-union majority, that AEI threatened employees with various other reprisals because of their support of the union, and that AEI created the impression of surveillance and otherwise interfered with the freedom of employee's union activities by interrogating employees about such activities, by warning of `harassment’ from Board agents, and by soliciting employees not to testify before the Board.”

According to a July 10, 1990 New York Times obituary, Joseph Mailman and Abraham Mailman also later “acquired substantial interests” in “Diamond T Motors, Gulfstream Land and Development and Republic Aviation.” As a result of his special economic interest in the Gulfstream Land and Development real estate firm in Florida, the wealthy businessman for whom Columbia’s “School of Public Health” was renamed in 1998, ironically, also sat next to Canadian liquor mogul Edgar M. Bronfman, the then-chairman of both Seagram Company Ltd. and Joseph E. Seagram and Sons Inc.--whose corporations apparently profited, in part, from the sale of liquor to some folks whose health declined due to excessive drinking. (end of part 4)