Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell 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 estate, 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 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 artile was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

Columbia University Provost Katznelson's Russell Sage Foundation Connection: Part 8

 

"Non-profit" Social Science Research Council: Former and current presidents linked to Columbia University and Russell Sage Foundation?

Besides being the Columbia provost who failed to immediately agree to meet the demands of the Graduate Workers of Columbia-UAW 2110 union in its 2021 strike at the Upper West Side university, former Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees Chair and Trustee and 2019--2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Ira Katznelson  sat on the Brooklyn-based Social Science Research Council’s board of directors and executive committee from 2008 until at least 2018; and, between 2012 and August 31, 2017, Columbia Provost Katznelson was the president of the  Social Science Research Council.

For being the Social Science Research Council president, Columbia Provost Katznelson obtained a total annual compensation of $323,091 between 2016 and 2017 from that “non-profit” organization, according to the Social Science Research Council’s Form 990 financial filing for 2017.

And former Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Katznelson’s successor as the Social Science Research Council President since September 2017 has been a former sociology professor and former “Dean of Social Science” at institutionally racist Columbia University, Alondra Nelson, who has also apparently sat on the boards of both the “philanthropic” Andrew W. Mellon and Russell Sage foundations in 2020. As a Jan. 30, 2020 press release that was posted on the Manhattan-based “non-profit” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s website noted: 

“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation today announced that Alondra Nelson, president of the Social Science Research Council…has been elected to its Board of Trustees.

“`We are thrilled that Alondra Nelson is joining the Mellon Board…,’ said Mellon Board of Trustees Chair Kathryn Hall….

“`It is a deep honor to join the Mellon Board of Trustees..,’ said Nelson

“…Nelson was on the faculty of Columbia University, where she served as the inaugural dean of social science for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences...Nelson’s research has been supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation….”

Coincidentally, less than six months after 2019--2020 Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar” Katznelson’s successor as Social Science Research Council president was “elected” to the Mellon Foundation board of trustees, the Russell Sage Foundation stated in a June 21, 2020 blog post, on its own website, that “the Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of…Alondra Nelson to its board of trustees effective at its November 2020 board meeting.”

Then, in a subsequent Jan. 22, 2021 blog post, the Russell Sage Foundation, coincidentally, announced that the former Columbia professor of sociology, Social Science Research Council president, Mellon Foundation trustee and Russell Sage Foundation trustee, “Alondra Nelson has been appointed by President Biden as deputy director for science and society;” and “in this capacity, she will help lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).” 

On its website, the Social Science Research Council claims it is “an independent” and “nonprofit” institution that “mobilizes necessary knowledge for the public good,” whose slogan is “Mobilizing Social Science For The Public Good.”

Yet according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019 the “nonprofit” Social Science Research Council (which, as a “public charity,” paid no federal income tax on its investment income of over $2.2 million and total revenues of over $19.6 million) spent less than $5 million on grants (including $798,712 on 177 ‘research” grants), but over $9 million on “salaries/other compensation/employee benefits.”

For example, Social Science Research Council President Nelson (who was paid a total compensation of $84,766 between Sept. 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018 by the Social Science Research Council, after she succeeded Columbia Provost Katznelson as its president during this period, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2017) received a total annual compensation of $276,007 from this non-profit organization between July 1, 2018 and June 30, 2019; before also joining the Mellon Foundation board of trustees in January 2020, joining the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in November 2020 and joining the Biden White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2021.

Coincidentally, the Russell Sage Foundation trustee who was given a grant of $163,531 by the Russell Sage Foundation to study “Sociostructural and psychological factors supporting the misperception of racial economic equality” in 2020-2021, Yale University Professor Jennifer Richeson, also sits on the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council—next to former Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs “research scholar” and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Trustee Vishakha N. Desai (who is also a board member of “one of the five biggest global companies in India,” Mahindra and Mahindra, according to the Social Science Research Council’s website).

In addition, other Social Science Research Council board members who sit next to Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Richeson include: Columbia University Professor of Economics and former Goldman, Sachs & Company Vice-President Jose A. Scheinkman; former Federal Reserve Bank of New York Senior Vice-President Til Schuerman; Skyview Ventures Principal and former Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust Managing Director Peter Nager; Windcrest Partners General Partner Michael Gellert; Warburg Pincus Special Limited Partner William H. Janeway; and Curten Capital Managing Partner Joseph Schull (who is “a longstanding investor in the technology, media and telecommunications sector,” according to the Social Science Research Council website).

And although Social Science Research Council President and Russell Sage Foundation Trustee Nelson also sits next to “longstanding investor in the technology, media and telecommunication sector” Joseph Schull on the board of the Social Science Research Council (despite this “non-profit” claiming to be mobilizing social science “for the public good”), as previously noted, the Russell Sage Foundation website’s Jan. 22, 2021 blog post observed that Social Science Research Council President Nelson, coincidentally, will now “help lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy” in 2021 as the Biden White House’s “deputy director for science and society.”

(end of part 8. 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 6

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

Prior to sitting on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees for ten years—between 1992 and 2002—and being the chair of this foundation’s board between 1999 and 2002, 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, was a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar” during the 1991-1992 academic year, before joining its board.

And, coincidentally, before joining the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees in 2010 and becoming its chair, until a few years ago, a former Columbia provost and Columbia professor of psychology, MacArthur Foundation board member Claude M. Steele, was given 5 “charitable” grants, totaling over $1 million, by the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation between 1993 and 2003—when current Columbia Provost Katznelson sat on the foundation’s board of trustees for nine of these same years.

Among the tax-exempt “charitable” grants former Russell Sage Foundation Trustee and former Columbia Provost Steele received between 1993 and 2003 from the Columbia-linked Russell Sage Foundation were the following: a $420,000 grant to study “stereotype vulnerability and academic performance: an intervention;” a $14,000 grant to do “a field test of `wise’ learning strategies;” a $30,000 grant to study “stereotype threat and academic achievement: an intervention;” a $350,000 grant to study “from diversity to community;” and a $221,382 grant to study “models of diversity and social identity threat as determinants of successful diversity.”

And, in 2022, the former provost of institutionally racist Columbia University, long-time member of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation board of directors and former chair of the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees, Professor Steele, will, coincidentally, now become a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar”—who is apparently eligible to be provided with “salary support up to 50 percent of their academic year salary (up to a maximum of $125,000 for a full term),” according to this foundation’s website.

Yet “self-dealing” was defined in Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary in 1983 as “financial dealing that is not at arm’s length” and “arm’s length” was defined, by the same dictionary, as “a distance discouraging personal contact or familiarity” and “the condition or fact that the parties to a transaction are independent.”

Besides also being a former chair of the Russell Sage Foundation board and the same foundation’s 2019-2020 “Olivia Sage Scholar,” current Columbia Provost Katznelson has also been sitting since 2008 on the board of directors and executive committee of the Social Science Research Council—which was “created by the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations, with additional funds from Julius Rosenwald and Russell Sage foundations,” according to Professor Joan Roelofs’s Foundations and Public Policy.  And, according to Professor Roelofs’s 2003 book, the Social Science Research Council was created, in part, “to distribute research funds lightly laundered of the Rockefeller and Carnegie stains.”

So, not surprisingly, besides sitting on the Social Science Research Council’s executive committee, Columbia Provost and 2019-2020 Russell Sage Foundation "Olivia Sage Scholar” Katznelson has been sitting on the Rockefeller Archives Center’s board of trustees since 2013, as well; while Russell Sage Foundation Trustee and MacArthur Foundation board member Martha Minow has also, not surprisingly, been sitting on the “philanthropic” Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation’s board of trustees since June 2020.

(end of part 6. To be continued.) (This article was first posted on the Upper West Side Patch website).

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