The Palestine Exception: The crackdown on Palestine advocacy on US campu...

How Harvard Rules

 

Columbia--Bob A. Feldman

Who Profits From Columbia University's Teachers College?

"Non-Profit" Teachers College of Columbia University's 525 W. 120th St. building. (photo by Bohao Zhao (wikicommons))

 Since January 22, 2021, thousands of Columbia University students of the Upper West Side "non-profit" university have been withholding their tuition payments for the Spring 2021 semester, in support of the following 5 demands:

"1) Columbia must alleviate the economic burden on students by reducing the cost of attendance and increasing financial aid.

- Reduce the cost of attendance (including tuition, fees, and room & board) by at least 10%.

- Increase financial aid by at least 10%.

- Replace the "student responsibility" with grants.

- Offer financial aid for summer classes for all schools at Columbia

- Forgive all late fees and other forms of retaliation for unpaid bills for the duration of the pandemic.

- We also demand that this reduction and increased aid should not come at the expense of instructor or worker pay, but rather at the expense of bloated administrative salaries, expansion projects, and other expenses that don't benefit students and workers.

"2) Columbia must fulfill its responsibilities to the people of West Harlem by committing to provide employment, education & affordable housing, and to end expansion.

" 3) Columbia must defund Public Safety and invest in community safety solutions that prioritize the safety of Black students and West Harlem residents, and repair harm caused by prior racist practices of Public Safety.

" 4) Columbia must commit to complete transparency about the University's investments and respect the democratic votes of the student body regarding investment and divestment decisions. This includes respecting the referendums at Barnard and Columbia College to divest from companies involved in human rights violations, divesting fully from fossil fuels, and respecting the results of future referendums relating to investment decisions; and

"5) Columbia must bargain in good faith with unions on campus around their key demands for improved compensation, benefits, and protections. This includes guaranteeing protections to international students and granting union recognition for MA and undergrad student-workers."

According to the Columbia University students who initiated the 2021 tuition strike:, "these issues are united by a shared root cause: a flagrant disregard for initiatives democratically supported within the community" and the administration of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's "unilateral decision-making process" which "has perpetuated the existence of these injustices in our community despite possessing ample resources to confront them with structural solutions."

In response to either the threat of a tuition strike or the tuition strike itself, Columbia University's Bollinger "administration announced it would freeze tuition, suspend fees on late payments, increase spring financial aid and provide a limited amount of summer grants to students," according to a Jan. 26, 2021 In These Times article, titled "Columbia Students Wage the Largest Tuition Strike in Nearly 50 Years," by Indigo Olivier. But "students who" were "withholding tuition were surprised when they learned of multiple cases in which $150 late fees appeared in students' accounts last weekend, though they have not been able to confirm whether they are expected to pay this fee," according to the same article.

In These Times also noted that, on Jan. 22, 2021, Columbia's Board of Trustees "finally formalized its commitment to divest from publicly traded oil and gas companies;" but on Jan. 20, 2021, "the Board of Trustees also quietly announced it was lifting its 2006 to 2020 policy of divestment and non-investment in `companies operating in Sudan.'"

Despite calling their Upper West Side-based private schools "non-profit" institutions, some of the administrators and professors of both Columbia University and Teachers College of Columbia University have, in recent years, apparently been pocketing total annual monetary compensations much higher than what most New York City workers who are still employed are paid; or what most Columbia students are likely to earn annually during the current decade.

According to the 2017 Form 990 financial filing of Teachers College of Columbia University (on whose board of trustees Columbia University President Bollinger has sat next to Rockefeller Brothers Fund Chair of the Board of Trustees and former "confidential assistant" to Secretary Richard Riley at the U.S. Department of Education during the first Clinton administration, Valerie Rockefeller, in recent years), for example, between Sept. 1, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2018, "non-profit" Columbia's Teachers College paid total annual compensations that exceeded $198,000 to the following folks:

1. Teachers College President and later President Emerita Susan Fuhrman's total annual compensation was $1,059,181;

2. Teachers College VP Suzanne Murphy's total annual compensation was $533,206;

3. Teachers College's then-newly-installed President Thomas Bailey's total annual compensation was $468,469;

4. Teachers College VP Harvey Spector's total annual compensation was $465,600;

5. Teachers College Provost & Dean Thomas James's total annual compensation was $465,250;

6. Teachers College Professor Sharon Kagan's total annual compensation was $423,098;

7. Teachers College Enid & Lesk Morse Chair Ruth Vinz's total annual compensation was $373,390;

8. Teachers College Professor Andrew Gordon's total annual compensation was $362,407;

9. Teachers College Professor Jeanne Brooks-Gunn's total annual compensation was $356,392;

10. Teachers College VP Janice Robinson's total annual compensation was $350,941;

11. Teachers College's former Vice-Provost William Baldwin's total annual compensation was $334,607;

12. Teachers College Professor Anne Lin Goodwin's total annual compensation was $330,646;

13. Teachers College Assoc. VP Nancy Streim's total annual compensation was $318,679;

14. Teachers College Vice Provost Catherine Embree's total annual compensation was $279,550;

15. Teachers College Chief of Staff Katharine Conway's total annual compensation was $230,181;

16. Teachers College Vice Provost Steven Goss's total annual compensation was $225,955; and

17. Teachers College's former General Counsel Lori Fox's total annual compensation was $198,594.

In 2018 the "non-profit" Teachers College of Columbia University also had over $149 million invested in "non-public equity funds" and over $28 million invested in "private equity and real estate funds," according to its 2017 Form 990 financial filing.

Between Sept. 1, 2017 and Aug. 31, 2018, the total revenues of Columbia University's Teachers College exceeded $241 million, which included over $47 million that came from "contributions and grants" and over $4 million that came from its investment income. In addition, Teachers College of Columbia University spent $1 million on "lobbying" between Sept. 2017 and August 2018.

So, not surprisingly, in July 2020,the privately-controlled Teachers College of Columbia University was awarded $6.3 million in two publicly-funded U.S. federal government grants from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Science for a "study of the Federal Work-Study program." And in October and November 2020, Multi-Billionaire U.S. Oligarch Bill Gates's Gates Foundation also gave four "charitable" grants, totaling over $1.2 million, to the Teachers College of institutionally racist Columbia University; including, ironically, a $499,000 tax-exempt "charitable" grant "to advance knowledge of which advising reforms disproportionately benefit students of color and students experiencing poverty" and a $100,000 "charitable" grant "to support reporting on racial inequities in education."

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

Columbia U.'s Public Health School at 722 W. 168th St. in Manhattan: Failed to protect NYC's public health in 2020?

Time To Redistribute Columbia Public Health School’s “Charitable” Grants Directly To Families Of NYC’s COVID-19 Victims In 2020?

It may be too early to tell whether or not the initially predicted number of estimated deaths “from COVID-19” in 2020 in NYC, in the absence of federal, state and city government “mitigation” policy decisions to establish more “social distancing,” was an initially accurate prediction? And it may be too early to tell to what degree the “new normal” of a daily life shut-down that was established in NYC and elsewhere in the USA actually prevented more fatalities; or whether the “new normal” of daily life which, for example, might attempt to ban gatherings of more than 50 people, will become a permanent “new normal" in NYC and the USA?

But it’s probably not too early to assume that the “public health researchers” at Gates Foundation-funded Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health will continue to receive a lot more money in “charitable grants” for their academic research projects during the next five years. Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health website, for example, indicates, on its “Grants and Gifts” page, that the following grants have been “awarded” to its academic “public health” researchers in recent years:

“Grants and Gifts

“Merlin Chowkwanyun and David Rosner received a $457,649 award from the National Science Foundation for a project titled “ToxicDocs Research Infrastructure Project,” for the period August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2021.

“Alwyn Cohall received a $10,300,000 award from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Criminal Justice Involvement Initiative for a project titled “Youth Opportunity Hub,” for the period July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2021.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $3,068,202 award from the National Institute of Mental Health for a project titled “Structural Stigma and HIV Prevention Outcomes,” for the period July 19, 2017 to April 30, 2022.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $955,143 award from the Centers for Disease Control for a project titled “Anti-Bullying Laws and Youth Violence in the United States: A Longitudinal Evaluation of Efficacy and Implementation,” for the period September 1, 2017 to August 31, 2020.

“Mark Hatzenbuehler received a $350,000 award from the William T. Grant Foundation for a project titled “Evaluating Strategies for Reducing Homophobic Bullying,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2023.

“Matthew Lee received a $120,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project titled “Health Policy Research Scholars Cohort Two-2017,” for the period July 1, 2017 to August 31, 2022.

“Lisa Rosen Metsch received a $7,968,704 award from the National Institute for Drug Abuse for a project titled “A Multi-Setting RCT of Integrated HIV Prevention and HCV Care for PWID,” for the period September 30, 2017 to July 31, 2022.

“Marita Murrman received a $3,069,880 award from the Health Resources and Services Administration for a project titled “Public Health Training Centers,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2022.

“Constance Nathanson received a $936,550 award from the National Institute for Child Health and Development for a project titled “Gender, Sexuality, and Health Training Grant,” for the period September 4, 2017 to April 30, 2022.

“Rachel Shelton received a $785,000 award from the American Cancer Society for a project titled “Sustainability of Lay Health Advisor Programs to Address Cancer Disparities,” for the period July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2022.

“Rachel Shelton (with Shakira Suglia of Emory University) received a $3,198,926 award from the National Institute on Aging for a project titled “Stress, Epigenetics, and Aging,” for the period July 1, 2018 to February 28, 2023.

“Karolynn Siegel and Eric Schrimshaw received an award from the National Institute for Minority Health Disparities for a project titled “Exchange Sex and HIV Risk Among MSM Online,” for the period September 25, 2017 to May 31, 2021.

“Hawi Teizazu received a $120,000 award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a project titled “Health Policy Research Scholars Cohort Three-2018,” for the period September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2023.”

Yet, instead of awarding future “charitable grants” to Columbia’s School of Public Health middle-class researchers, perhaps all this “public health” research grant money should now be redistributed to the families of those New Yorkers (disproportionately of African-American racial background or elderly) who lost their lives or their jobs in 2020? Because New York City’s public health system was apparently not adequately prepared by Columbia’s Public Health School to prevent the spread of 21st-century viruses like COVID-19 in NYC or to provide equal and effective medical care and treatment medication for all patients, with underlying health conditions or living in local nursing homes, who contracted COVID-19 during NYC’s “Corona-Gates” Scandal of 2020. (end of article)

Who Ruled Columbia University in Early 20th Century?--Part 2

U.S. muckraking writer Upton Sinclair indicated which special corporate interests have historically controlled the tax-exempt and "non-profit"Columbia University campus, when he wrote the following in a chapter, titled "The University of the House of Morgan," that appeared in his 1923 book, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education:

"...This University of the House of Morgan is run by a board of trustees. Under the law these trustees are the absolute sovereign, the administrators of the property, responsible to no one. They cannot be removed, no matter what they do, and they are self-perpetuating, they appoint their own successors. Their charter, be it noted, is a contract with the state, and can never be altered or revised. Such was the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Dartmouth case, way back in 1819.

"Who are the members of this board? The first thing to be noted about them is that there is only one educator, and that is the president of the university, an ex-officio member. Not one of them is a scholar, nor familiar with the life of the intellect. There is one engineer, one physician, and one bishop; there are ten corporation lawyers, and eight classified as bankers, railroad owners, real estate owners, merchants and manufacturers....The chairman of the board is William Barclay Parsons, engineer of the subway, and director in numerous corporations. The youngest member of the board is Marcellus Hartley Dodge, who was elected when he was 26 years old, and was a director of the Equitable Life while still an undergraduate at Columbia; he is a son-in-law of William Rockefeller, and is chairman of the Remington Arms Company and Union Metallic Cartridge Company. He is said to have cleaned up twenty-four million [equivalent to over $538 million in 2017 dollars] in one deal in Midvale Steel, and in October 1916, he is credited with making two million [equivalent to over $44 million in 2017 dollars] by cornering the market in munitions machinery. Frederick R. Coudert is one of the most prominent attorneys of the plutocracy, a director in the National Surety and Equitable Trust, Herbert L. Satterlee is a Morgan attorney and a Morgan son-in-law. Robert S. Lovett is chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, and director of a dozen other roads. Newcomb Carlton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, guides the affairs of a great university in spite of the fact that he is not a college man. Reverened William T. Manning is an ex-officio member, one might say, being the bishop of the church of J.P. Morgan and Company. You must understand that Columbia is descended from Kings College, an Episcopal institution, and the bishop, and three vestrymen of Old Trinity are on its board. Perpont Morgan, the elder, was on all his life, and Stephen Baker, president of the Bank of Manhattan and the Bank of the Metropolis, is still on. A study of those who have held office on the board of Columbia, from 1900 to 1922, shows fifty-nine persons classified as follows: bankers, railroad owners, real estate owners, merchants and manufacturers, 20; lawyers, 21; ministers, 8; physicians, 6; educators, 1; engineers, 3. The six physicians were on because of their connection with the College of Physicians and Surgeons, a branch of Columbia..."

Who Ruled Columbia University In Early 20th Century?--Part 1

U.S. muckraking writer Upton Sinclair indicated which special corporate interests have historically controlled the tax-exempt and "non-profit" Columbia University campus, when he wrote the following in a chapter, titled "The University of the House of Morgan," that appeared in his 1923 book, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education:

"The headquarters of the American plutocracy is, of course, New York City...It is inevitable that this headquarters of our plutocratic empire should be also the headquarters of our plutocratic education. The interlocking directors could not discommode themselves by taking long journeys; therefore they selected themselves a spacious site on Morningside Heights, and there stands the palatial University of the House of Morgan, which sets the standard for the higher education of America. Other universities, we shall find, vary from the ideal; there are some which have old traditions, there are others which permit modern eccentricities; but in Columbia you have plutocracy, perfect, complete and final, and as I shall presently show, the rest of America's educational system comes more and more to be modeled upon it. Columbia's educational experts take charge of the school and college systems of the country, and the production of plutocratic ideas becomes an industry as thoroughly established, as completely systematized and standardized as the production of automobiles or sausages.

"Needless to say, the University of the House of Morgan is completely provided with funds; its resources are estimated at over seventy-five million dollars [equivalent to over $1 billion in 2017 dollars] and its annual income is over seven million [equivalent to over $100 million in 2017 dollars]. A considerable part of its endowment is invested in stocks and bonds, under the supervision of the interlocking directors. I have a typewritten list of these holdings, which occupies more than twenty pages, and includes practically all the important railroads and industrial corporations in the United States. Whoever you are, and wherever you live in America, you cannot spend a day, you can hardly spend an hour of your life, without paying tribute to Columbia University. In order to collect the material for this book I took a journey of seven thousand miles, and traveled on fourteen railroads. I observe that every one of these railroads is included in the lists, so on every mile of my journey I was helping to build up the Columbia machine. I helped to build it up when I lit the gas in my lodging-house room in New York; for Columbia University owns $58,000 [equivalent to over $830,000 in 2017 dollars] worth of New York Gas and Electric Light, Heat and Power Company's 4 per cent bonds; I helped to build it up when I telephoned my friends to make engagements, for Columbia University owns $50,000 [equivalent to over $715,000] worth of the New York Telephone Company's 4 1/2 per cent bonds; I helped to build it up when I took a spoonful of sugar with my breakfast, for Columbia University owns some shares in the American Sugar Refining Company, and also in the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation.

"The great university stops at nothing, however small: `five and ten cent stores,' and the Park and Tilford Grocery Company, and the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company. I have on my desk a letter from a woman telling me how the Standard Oil Company has been dispossessing homesteaders from the oil lands of California; Columbia University is profiting by these robberies, because it owns $25,000 [equivalent to over $357,000 in 2017 dollars] worth of the gold debenture bonds of the Standard Oil Company of California. Recently I met a pitiful human wreck who had given all but his life to the Bethlehem Steel Company; Columbia University took a part of this man's health and happiness. Crossing the desert on my way home, in the baking heat of summer I saw far out in the barren mountains a huge copper smelter, vomiting clouds of yellow smoke into the air. We in the Pullman sat in our shirt-sleeves, with electric fans playing and white-clad waiters bringing us cool drinks, but even so, we suffered from the heat; yet out there in those lonely wastes men toil in front of furnace fires, and when they drop they are turned to mummies in the baking sand and their names are not recorded. Not a thought of them came into the minds of the passengers in the transcontinental train; and, needless to say, no thought of them troubles the minds of the thirty thousand seekers of the higher learning who flock to Columbia University every year. With serene consciences these young people cultivate the graces of life, upon the income of $49,000 [equivalent to over $701,000 in 2017 dollars] worth of stock in the American Smelters Securities Company..." 

Columbia University and the Elimination of Patrice Lumumba Revisited--Part 2

“…I would like to refer specifically to the painful case of the Congo, unique in the history of the modern world, which shows how, with absolute impunity, with the most insolent cynicism, the rights of peoples can be flouted. The direct reason for all this is the enormous wealth of the Congo, which the imperialist countries want to keep under their control…How can we forget the betrayal of the hope that Patrice Lumumba placed in the United Nations? How can we forget the machinations and maneuvers that followed in the wake of the occupation of that country by UN troops, under whose auspices the assassins of this great African patriot acted with impunity?...”

--Che Guevara in his Dec. 11, 1964 speech to the UN General Assembly

“…Cordier was part of the Congo Club, a group of senior UN officials intent on making sure that the international organization safeguarded Western interests in the Congo…. “

--Ludo De Witte in his 2001 book, The Assassination of Lumumba

“Lumumba’s fall and assassination were the result of a vast conspiracy involving U.S., Belgian and UN officials…My own research in the United Nations Archives in New York has yielded data on…the anti-Lumumba activities of Andrew Cordier…”

--Howard University Professor Emeritus of African Studies Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja in his 2003 book, The Congo From Leopold to Kabula: A People’s History

“Students for a Democratic Society will hold a rally today to protest the University's expansion policies and the alleged involvement of Acting [Columbia University] President Andrew W. Cordier in the assassination of former Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba….The radical student organization has…accused President Cordier, who was formerly dean of the School of International Affairs…of helping to plot…the downfall of his government…A leader of the Brooklyn Black Panther Party, known as Captain Ford, is scheduled to speak at this evening's rally…”

--from a Sept. 26, 1968 Columbia Daily Spectator article

“…Mr. Lumumba, the Prime Minister….is completely irresponsible—if not a mad man…He is wildly ambitious, lusting for power and strikes fear into anyone who crosses his path. There is really no such thing as a Congolese Government…There is a cabinet, but Lumumba uses it as his tool. Some members of the Cabinet share his vision and lust for power…The only real solution of the problem is a change of leadership. It will not be easy, however, to remove Lumumba from his position…"

--Former Columbia University President and School of International Affairs [SIPA] Dean and United Nations Under-Secretary General Andrew Cordier in an Aug. 18, 1960 letter to Manchester College in Indiana Emeritus Professor V.F. Schwalm

Columbia University and the Elimination of Patrice Lumumba Revisited—Part 2

In his 2009 book Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the late 1960s, Professor of History and African American Studies Stefan Bradley noted that on Aug. 23, 1968--three months after they had requested on May 22, 1968 that New York City police be used to clear Columbia University’s campus of protesting students for a second time--“Grayson Kirk and David Truman stepped down as the president and vice president” of Columbia University; and “Andrew Cordier, from the School of International Affairs [SIPA]” of Columbia University “took over the reins of the university as acting president.” Cordier then spent two years as Columbia University’s fifteenth president until September 1970, before spending an additional two years as Dean of Columbia’s School of International Affairs [SIPA] prior to his 1975 death--from cirrhosis of the liver--at the age of 74.

Before being appointed as Columbia’s School of International Affairs Dean in 1962 (by a Columbia University board of trustees that included the former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium between 1959 and 1961, Columbia Life Trustee William A.M. Burden), Cordier had worked since 1946 at the United Nations as advisor to the President of the General Assembly and executive assistant to the Secretary General. And, as UN Under-Secretary General, Cordier, coincidentally, “had a large role in the Congo” in the summer of 1960, 57 years ago, according to Professor Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Professor of History Emmanuel Gerard and University of Pennsylvania Professor of History Bruce Kuklick’s 2015 book, Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba.

As Carole Collins observed in an article, titled “The Cold War Comes to Africa: Cordier and the 1960 Congo Crisis,” that appeared in the June 22, 1993 issue of the Journal of International Affairs:

“…In early September 1960, while filling in as the Secretary-General's interim special representative to the Congo... Cordier's decisions effectively…reinforced U.S. and Belgian efforts to oust Lumumba… Some scholars argue that Cordier's actions ultimately served to help abort the Congo's transition to democracy, set in motion a series of events culminating in the murder of Lumumba -- the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister -- and facilitated the rise to power of a young Congolese army officer, Joseph Desire Mobutu...The Zairian [Congolese] people are still grappling to this day with the tragic legacy of these decisions…

“…Several sources, including Madeleine Kalb's study based on declassified diplomatic cable traffic, document the extent to which Cordier continually briefed and was briefed by U.S. diplomats and collaborated with them on Congo policy….

“…Cordier's 15 September [1960] letter to [Manchester College in Indiana Emeritus Professor V.F.] Schwalm reveals that he had advance notice of Kasavubu's intent to dismiss Lumumba, and that he welcomed the move…Cordier notes he met four times with Kasavubu…to discuss the firing of Lumumba… When Kasavubu announced his dismissal of Lumumba from office on the radio on Monday, 5 September, Cordier…made his `two most important decisions:’ to send U.N. troops to close the airport and to seize the radio station.

“These…actions…primarily hurt Lumumba because only Kasavubu enjoyed access to radio facilities in the neighboring state of Congo Brazzaville. Similarly, Kasavubu's allies were allowed to use the ostensibly closed airport to travel into the Congolese interior to mobilize support for the president while Lumumba's supporters were grounded….Near the end of his three-week stay in early September, Cordier …authorized the United Nations to offer food and pay to the Congolese Army… This action…allowed Mobutu -- a one-time Lumumba aide who had been appointed chief-of-staff of the army by Kasavubu just days earlier -- to win credit for paying the soldiers their past-due salaries…and to pave the way for his coup attempt a few days later…. The combination of U.N. and U.S. support was pivotal for Mobutu's subsequent seizure of power.

“…On 14 September [1960], Mobutu seized power… In the end, Cordier's actions served to fuel the Congolese civil war…. After his dismissal by Kasavubu, Lumumba was placed under virtual house arrest, but even this failed to dampen his popular or legislative support….In January 1961, he was killed through the coordinated efforts of Mobutu, Kasavubu, Tshombe and the CIA…[Connor Cruise] O'Brien – the…Irish diplomat…who had represented the United Nations in Katanga in 1961…believes that Cordier deliberately helped Washington plot Lumumba's ouster…”

Howard University Professor Emeritus of African Studies Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja’s 2003 book, The Congo From Leopold to Kabula: A People’s History, also contains a reference to the role that former Columbia University President Cordier played in Congolese history:

“…The dismissal [of Lumumba] was…clearly a civilian coup and therefore illegal. Both houses of [the Congolese] parliament, where Lumumba still had a working majority, gave him a vote of confidence and rejected Kasa-Vubu’s decisions as null and void…Cordier and U.S. Ambassador [to the Congo] Timberlake worked hand in hand to implement U.S. policy objectives. Acting as a viceroy, Cordier helped engineer and execute the illegal overthrow of Lumumba from power, beginning with his active support of the Kasa-Vubu coup of 5 September [1960]…”

Conor Cruise O’Brien’s 1962 book To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History, also indicated how former Columbia University President Cordier contributed to the illegal overthrow of Patrice Lumumba’s democratically-elected Congolese government in September 1960:

“…Andrew Cordier…had taken a decision which, politically, had broken the back of Lumumba—the Prime Minister who had called in the United Nations [to end Belgian military intervention in support of the illegal Belgium-backed secessionist Tshombe regime in the Congo’s Katanga province]…Had it not been for Mr. Cordier’s…action, there is little doubt that the support Lumumba could have rallied at this crucial moment would have been most formidable…Mr. Cordier’s actions…had played a decisive part in this crucial series of events, as a result of which the Congo no longer possessed a universally recognized Government…”

But as Kwame Nkrumah [the democratically-elected Ghanaian president who was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup in 1966] argued in his 1967 book Challenge Of The Congo, “how could such action of the United Nations be justified when Lumumba was the lawful Prime Minister?” Nkrumah also noted in the same book that “the executive assistant to the Secretary-General, Andrew Cordier, knew in advance of Kasavubu’s plan to dismiss Lumumba;” and during the period in early September 1960 when former “acting” Columbia University President Cordier was the “acting” head of the UN Congo Mission in Kinshasa[Leopoldville], “press correspondents in Leopoldville at the time were convinced that the UN were helping to oust Lumumba…”

Coincidentally, a now de-classified “Telegram From the Station in the Congo to the Central Intelligence Agency” that was sent from Leopoldville[Kinshasa] on Sept. 5, 1960 also stated:

“…An unimpeachable source…advised [Embassy] that Kasavubu plans to oust Lumumba…As soon as this step taken, he plans to broadcast a message to Congolese people from Radio Congo requesting them to remain calm and accept the new government….Kasavubu plan includes following steps: A. For the UN Operation Congo (UNOC) to guarantee his personal safety with UN troops. B. Request UNOC to guard the radio station, thus guaranteeing his personal safety when he speaks and insuring that Lumumba forces will not be able take control of the radio and mount a propaganda campaign in support of Lumumba. C. Airports Congo would be closed to all departures. 4. Kasavubu’s plan has been coordinated with UNOC at highest levels here. He already has taken the first step, to demand protection by UN troops. The rest of the plan was to be implemented 5 September but timing may well be changed.”

According to Ludo De Witte’s 2001 book The Assassination of Lumumba, as Acting Head of the UN Operation Congo [UNOC] in Kinshasa/Leopoldville during early September 1960, Cordier “did exactly what was expected of him.”

In discussing, at a September 2004 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Cold War Studies conference at Princeton University, what happened in the Congo between July 1960 and the Jan. 17, 1961 murder of the democratically elected, but illegally ousted, Congolese Premier Lumumba and two of Lumumba’s colleagues, CUNY Emeritus Professor of Political Science Herbert Weiss characterized former Columbia President Cordier’s historical role in the following way:

“There is a very important event…that is the closing of the airport and the closing of the radio, without which the dismissal of Lumumba would have had a very different end…The key person there is Andrew Cordier…Cordier was, at the very minimum, a profoundly non-neutral person whose writings suggest that he was a racist…It’s Cordier’s actions that cut the feet from under Lumumba…”

And at the same September 2004 conference, another conference participant, Thomas Kanza, the Congo’s first permanent representative to the UN, said: 

“If I may, I would like to support what Herbert said….Your…points are really correct. When Cordier came to Kinshasa…and Cordier stepped in, as special representative of the Secretary General. Number one, the dismissal of Lumumba…Cordier stepped in and said that he must be dismissed… Cordier was really acting as the number one UN [man] in the Congo...Cordier, as far as I’m concerned, was responsible for many things, including what would happen later….”

According to the Death in the Congo book, in the month before the former Columbia president used his UN power in the Congo to coordinate with Kasa-Vubu’s plan to illegally dismiss Lumumba in early September 1960, Cordier had personally interviewed Lumumba in New York City on Aug. 1, 1960, when “Lumumba made a last visit to the UN;” and the following personal interaction happened during this interview:

“Cordier began his interview with Lumumba with a lengthy and condescending exposition…Ignoring the white man’s speech, Lumumba made his own long reply. He admonished Cordier and expressed disappointment…that the UN had not evicted the Belgians…”

 

During the same month that Cordier was coordinating with Kasa-Vubu to illegally remove Lumumba from power in a “civilian coup,” the CIA’s Chief of Station in the Congo, Larry Devlin (using illegally the diplomatic cover of “consul” at the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa/Leopoldville), was also covertly working to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Patrice Lumumba. In his 2007 book Chief of Station, Congo: A Memoir of 1960-67, Devlin (who died in 2008) describes what happened when he visited the Congolese presidential palace shortly after the “civilian coup” of Kasavubu that Cordier backed:

“…[Congolese National Army/ANC] Colonel Mobutu stood in the doorway flanked by two soldiers…`Wait for me outside,’ he said softly to the soldiers. He closed the door and shook hands with me…Finally, he said, `Here is the situation: the army is prepared to overthrow Lumumba. But only on the condition that the United States will recognize the government that would replace Lumumba’s…’

“[CIA Director] Allen Dulles had made it absolutely clear to me that the United States wanted Lumumba removed from power, but I had always thought in terms of a legal or parliamentary change, not an army coup…Yet the more I considered Mobutu’s plan, the better it sounded…

“`I’ve got to get back to my commanders,’ Mobutu said, turning to leave. `I have to give them a `go’ or a `no go’ order. Lumumba doesn’t know they’re here, so they must get back to their bases before he finds out.’…

“…I held out my hand to Mobutu and said with as much conviction as I could muster: `I can assure you the United States government will recognize a temporary government composed of civilian technocrats.’

“…`The coup will take place within a week,’ he said. `But I will need five thousand dollars [equivalent to around $41,000 in 2017 U.S. dollars] to provide for my senior officers…’

“…I assured Mobutu that the money would be available and arranged to meet him in his office…I left the presidential palace without further incident…I arrived at army headquarters at the early hour agreed upon with Mobutu…Mobutu said he had met his area commanders and told them that the coup was on. `I’ll be setting a date and time shortly but it will be within the next week,’ he said. `I’ll take control of the radio station, announce the formation of new government.’…On the evening of Sept. 14 [1960]…at a party…at the home of Alison `Tally’ Palmer, the American vice-consul…I…had a call with the news that Mobutu was on the radio announcing that the army was installing a government of technocrats…Our efforts to remove Lumumba…were at last bearing fruit…”

In a statement at a Dec. 10, 1960 UN Security Council meeting, the Moroccan representative to the UN, Mhamet Boucetta, indicated how the CIA-supported Mobutu used some of the Congolese National Army [ANC] troops (that Cordier had paid with U.S. government-provided UN money)  to “install a government of technocrats” between Sept. 13 (when a joint meeting of the Congolese Chamber of Representatives and Senate restored full power to the illegally “dismissed” Lumumba by 88 votes to 5 with 3 abstentions) and Sept. 14, 1960:

“I should like to tell you something I saw with my own eyes. I was present at the last two meetings held by this [Congolese] Parliament…By an overwhelming majority, the Parliament gave the legitimate Government a vote of confidence and renewed its mandate…

“The next morning, a hundred soldiers with helmets and submachine guns at the ready and an old tank with a rusty gun were stationed in front of the Parliament building. The elected representatives of the people were not allowed to enter…The members of Parliament were rounded up and hustled away, payment of their allowances was stopped…That is what…we saw…”

And less than five months after Mobutu’s first CIA-backed coup in September 1960, the 35- year-old Lumumba was murdered in the Katanga region of the Congo. As The Congo From Leopold To Kabila: A People’s History book observed:

“As it turned out, Mobutu played a critical role in every step leading to Lumumba’s assassination…He did so by the coup of 14 September [1960], Lumumba’s arrest on 1 December [1960], and his incarceration at the elite military garrison of Mbano-Ngungu[Thysville]. And Mobutu was among the…Congolese involved in the…plan of sending Lumumba to his death in Katanga…”

And, according to Death in the Congo:

“CIA turncoats, among others, have testified that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination Devlin boasted to people in the Agency about his role in the murder…In 1960 he persisted in trying to finish off Lumumba and immediately took credit when the African was killed; he later persisted in denying that he tried…Justin O’Donnell, a senior officer from CIA headquarters got to Leopoldville[Kinshasa] on November 3 [1960]. O’Donnell would oversee the murder and report to Devlin. In asking for O’Donnell after Washington’s encouragement, Devlin let headquarters know that he still had…poisons, but also wanted a `high-powered foreign make rifle with telescopic and silencer.’…Devlin asked for the rifle in writing a week after an unusual appearance by Lumumba on the balcony of his residents where he spoke to a crowd below…Devlin and those around him in the Congo would not rest until someone finished the job…The Belgians and the American fixated on murder…”

 In a 2010 AllAfrica website column, a former Staff Director of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Africa, Stephen R. Weissman,  also asserted that “Devlin gave a green light to delivering Lumumba to men who had publicly vowed to kill him” and “shortly before” Lumumba’s “transfer” to where he was murdered, “Mobutu indicated to Devlin that Lumumba `might be executed,’ according to a Church Committee [of the U.S. Senate] interview,” but “Devlin did not suggest that he offered any objection or caution.”

In an Aug. 18, 1960 letter to Manchester College in Indiana Emeritus Professsor V.F. Schwalm, former Columbia University President Cordier wrote the following about the democratically-elected Congolese prime minister that he would help oust from power less than a month later:

“…Mr. Lumumba, the Prime Minister….is completely irresponsible—if not a mad man…He is wildly ambitious, lusting for power and strikes fear into anyone who crosses his path. There is really no such thing as a Congolese Government…There is a cabinet, but Lumumba uses it as his tool. Some members of the Cabinet share his vision and lust for power….The only real solution of the problem is a change of leadership. It will not be easy, however to remove Lumumba from his position…In various ways the Secretary-General has given encouragement to the moderates and they are also receiving encouragement from other powerful political sources…”

Patrice Lumumba, however, presented an alternative historical point of view in the last letter he wrote from the Camp Hardy military prison in Mbano-Ngungu[Thysville]--a letter to his wife--before being assassinated on January 17, 1961:

“My dear wife,

“I am writing these words not knowing whether they will reach you, when they will reach you, and whether I shall still be alive when you read them…What we wished for our country, its right to an honorable life, to unstained dignity, to independence without restrictions, was never desired by the Belgian imperialists and the Western allies, who found direct and indirect support, both deliberate and unintentional, amongst certain high officials of the United Nations, that organization in which we placed all our trust when we called on its assistance. Neither brutal assaults, nor cruel mistreatment, nor torture have ever led me to beg for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head held high, unshakable faith, and the greatest confidence in the destiny of my country rather than live in slavery and contempt for sacred principles. History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that is taught in Brussels, Paris, Washington or in the United Nations, but the history which will be taught in the countries freed from imperialism and its puppets…   Love live the Congo! Long live Africa!

“Patrice”

(end of article)

Columbia University's Boies Schiller Flexner and U.S. Senator Gillibrand Connection

Should Boies Schiller Flexner managing partner and Gillibrand campaign contributor also chair the tax-exempt Columbia University board of trustees?

“Boies Schiller and Flexner [BSF] announced today that partner Kirsten Gillibrand was elected…She raised some $3 million in campaign contributions, including substantial support from colleagues at BSF…The Firm issued the following statement: `We are extremely proud of our partner…’ Ms. Gillibrand…is on leave while she serves in Washington.’…”

--from a Nov. 8, 2006 Boies Schiller Flexner [BSF] press release 

“Jonathan is a co-founder and managing partner of Boies Schiller Flexner…He has served as lead counsel…for clients including Barclays, Goldman Sachs, the New York Yankees, and the fantasy sports website DraftKings….He has represented global corporations based in the United States, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Kuwait, and Singapore… Jonathan serves as Chair of Columbia University’s Board of Trustees...”

--from the Boies Schiller Flexner website

“…Endowment fund earnings are exempt from federal income tax….Changing the tax treatment of college and university endowments…could be modified to increase federal revenues...”

--from a Dec. 2015 Congressional Research Services Report

Columbia University’s Boies Schiller Flexner and U.S. Senator Gillibrand Connection

Most people in the United States don’t think private U.S. universities owning valuable real estate property and billions of dollars’ worth of corporate stocks and bonds in their endowment portfolio—like Columbia University, Harvard University and NYU—should be exempt from paying their fair share of federal, state and city corporate and property taxes.

Yet since being named by former Democratic New York Governor David Paterson in 2009 to replace Hillary Clinton as one of New York State’s representatives in the U.S. Senate, a former Boies Schiller Flexner [BSF] corporate law firm partner, Kirsten Gillibrand, has apparently not been eager to introduce much federal legislation to require private U.S. universities like Columbia University to pay their fair share of federal taxes.

One reason might be because the current chair of tax-exempt Columbia University’s board of trustees, Jonathan Schiller, is, coincidentally, a co-founder and  managing partner of the same BSF law firm in which U.S. Senator Gillibrand previously worked, prior to being first elected in 2006 to just represent New York’s 20^th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Also coincidentally, prior to former New York Governor Paterson naming former BSF partner Gillibrand to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, the election campaign fund of Paterson was given two campaign contributions, totaling $50,000, by two BSF law firm partners on Dec. 23, 2008. As Zack Lowe observed in an article, titled “Former Boies Schiller Partner Will Fill Clinton Senate Seat,” that appeared in the Jan. 23, 2009 issue of The American Lawyer:

“Kirsten Gillibrand, the upstate Democratic congresswoman and former Boies Schiller Flexner partner…will replace Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate…The Village Voice…posted a nice bio of Gillibrand, outlining her father’s ties to New York’s most powerful Republicans…Gillibrand is a favorite of the National Rifle Association…

“The most interesting tidbit in the Voice piece for our purposes is the fact that David Boies (name partner at Boies Schiller Flexner) contributed $25,000 to Paterson’s campaign fund on Dec. 23, 2008. Boies’s son, Christopher, also a partner at the firm, wrote a $25,000 check to the governor’s campaign the same day…”

The law firm of Columbia University Board of Trustees Chair Schiller, not surprisingly, has also been the number one source of campaign contributions to former BSF partner-turned U.S. Representative/U.S. Senator Gillibrand since she began her federal office-seeking career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website data. Over $668,000 in campaign contributions from individuals employed at Schiller’s BSF law firm have been accepted by Gillibrand’s election campaign committees during her political career.

Schiller, for example, contributed over $9,500 to Gillibrand’s campaign committee between Jan. 30, 2009 and March 3, 2011; and, on May 12, 2014, Schiller made a $5,000 campaign contribution to Gillibrand’s Off The Sidelines PAC. The Open Secrets website data also indicates that during the 2015-2016 campaign cycle Gillibrand’s Off The Sidelines PAC was given $27,800 by individuals employed at Schiller’s law firm, making BSF the 5^th-largest source of money for Gillibrand’s Off The Sidelines PAC during the 2015-2016 period.

In addition to contributing funds to Gillibrand’s campaign committee and Off The Sidelines PAC, Columbia University’s board of trustees chair also contributed over $67,000 to the politically partisan campaign committees of other Democratic Party politicians’ campaigns (including over $7,300 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign committees and over $11,00 to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer’s campaign committees) and over $152,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee between Apr. 30, 2001 and June 1, 2016 (including a $33,400 campaign contribution on March 23, 2015). Schiller also made a $10,000 campaign contribution to Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer Labor Party state organization on Oct. 2, 2014.

BSF Chairman David Boies, who co-founded the BSF law firm with Schiller, has, however, contributed much more money than Schiller to fund the election campaigns of Democratic Party politicians on both the federal and state level between 1999 and 2017, according to the Open Secrets website’s data. Between Oct. 28, 2004 and Oct. 25, 2016, the BSF chairman and co-founder made 49 campaign contributions, totalling over $388,000, to help bankroll the Democratic State Party organizations in 34 different states.

On Sept. 13, 2016, for example, Boies gave a separate $10,000 campaign contribution to the state Democratic Party organization in each of the following states: Maine, Missouri, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Texas, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Oregon, West Virginia, Wyoming, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Georgia, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Delaware, Tennessee and Alaska; and on that same day, the state Democratic Party organization in Kentucky was given two campaign contributions, totaling $20,000, by Schiller’s law firm business partner.

The following month, Boies also gave a $10,000  campaign contribution to Iowa’s state Democratic Party organization on Oct. 11, 2016 and his second 2016 campaign contribution of $10,000 to Nevada’s state Democratic Party organization on Oct. 26, 2016. In addition, on June 30, 2016 the Democratic Committee of New York State was also given a $10,000 campaign contribution by the chairman and co-founder of the Columbia University-linked BSF.

On the national level, Boies gave five campaign contributions, totaling $278,000, to the Democratic National Committee [DNC] Services Corporation between June 22, 2011 and Sept. 26, 2016; and, between Dec. 31, 2007 and March 23, 2015, over $183,000 was contributed by Schiller’s BSF co-founder to the Democratic Party’s Senatorial Campaign Committee. In addition, Boies gave a $500,000 campaign contribution to the House Majority PAC Super-PAC on Oct. 24, 2013 and two campaign contributions, totalling another $500,000 to the Senate Majority Super PAC, between Oct. 28, 2013 and Oct. 25, 2016.

Over $232,000 in direct money contributions to the individual campaign committees of at least 44 Democratic Party politicians other than former BSF law firm partner Gillibrand have also been made by Schiller’s BSF business partner between 1999 and 2017 (including over $13,000 to Rep. Charles Rangel’s campaign committee, over $13,000 to Rep. Nita Lowey’s campaign committee, over $11,000 to U.S. Senator Al Franken and over $6,000 to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer).

According to David A. Kaplan’s Oct. 20, 2010 Fortune magazine article, Schiller and Boies’s BSF firm of 240 lawyers “revolutionized the economics of corporate law practice” and, coincidentally, had “the nation’s third-highest profits per equity partner-$2.9 million” among large corporate law firms. The same article also noted that “Boies Schiller…has regular corporate clients to maintain a stream of revenue,” but Schiller and Boies’ firm also “imitates investment banks by charging flat fees,” so that a firm client’s “signing bonus, for example, can be $10 million -- regardless of how much lawyer time actually gets put in.” The Fortune magazine article also indicated that in 2010, about half of BSF’s revenue “came from flat fees and contingency arrangements,” while BSF’s regular corporate clients were apparently being billed for a BSF lawyer’s time at a $960 per hour rate in 2010.

One reason Boies has apparently been able to contribute so much money in recent years to bankroll the election campaigns of Democratic Party politicians like former BSF law firm partner Gillibrand is that BSF apparently was paid a $150 million fee “on top of an annual $5 million fee” in 2008 for representing American Express in a legal case; and “a law firm source” told Fortune magazine that Boies was personally taking “north of $10 million” annually from his legal work, thus “probably making him the highest-paid lawyer in the country” in 2010.

Besides providing legal services for American Express, Columbia Board of Trustees Chair Schiller and BSF Chairman Boies’ law firm has also provided legal services for tobacco companies like Philip Morris/Altria, R.J. Reynolds and Ligget’s and for other corporate clients like Goldman Sachs, DuPont, Apple, Barclays, CBS, Oracle and Sony.

After Wikileaks, in April 2015, published on its site the emails that a hacker had previously obtained from Sony’s server, BSF Chairman and Co-Founder Boies, for example, spent the following week “sending out a hyperbolic letter to various news organizations pressuring them to avert their eyes from the hacked email trove that WikiLeaks published” and “misleadingly claiming that journalists could be breaking US law by even looking at the emails,” according to Trevor Timm’s April 22, 2015 London Guardian column.

In the same column, Trevor Timm also noted that “New York Times reporter Eric Lipton” had previously “won a prize for his…investigative series on how private companies and their lobbyists are colluding with state attorneys general to pursue corporate agendas in secret, which prominently featured emails from the hacked Sony trove in one story;” and BSF lawyers for “Sony should not be able to tell journalists what to print,” since “news organizations have a First Amendment right to publish newsworthy information that they know was stolen, as long as they did not participate in the underlying crime.”

Coincidentally, Boies and Schiller’s BSF corporate law firm also includes the following ex-U.S. government officials: former Federal Communications Commission [FCC] Enforcement Chief Travis LeBlanc; former Clinton and Bush II White House National Security Council Director for Transnational Threats Leo Wolosky; and the Obama Administration’s former U.S. Ambassador to the UN for Special Political Affairs and Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security David Pressman.

According to a March 4, 2017 BSF press release, BSF law partner LeBlanc was “the chief law enforcement officer at the FCC” who “spearheaded hundreds of enforcement actions.” Yet now LeBlanc “will help clients manage their litigation, regulatory risk and direct strategic responses to government enforcement efforts,” despite an FCC rule that apparently only prohibits him for one year from working on the same issues he was working on at the FCC.

As the former chief FCC law enforcement officer told Big Law Business reporter Stephanie Russell Kraft in a March 9, 2017 interview:

“I’m going to be working on privacy and cybersecurity issues. It’s an area where, in the last few years in government, I’ve been very active, both on the state level in California and on the national level at the FCC. I’m going to spend a lot of time working on the issues that tech companies face when dealing with government regulatory bodies, the kinds of issues that say, an Uber faces when trying to enter a new city, or what Airbnb faces when trying to figure out how laws about public accommodation apply to them. As someone who’s had state experience and federal experience..., I believe I have a skill set that will be extremely valuable to a lot of tech companies, and being backed by the litigation powerhouse at Boies Schiller, should we need to go down that road, will be a huge asset.

“…I expect to be working on specific matters, like companies embroiled in investigations. Sometimes a federal enforcement action or a state action spawns a private class action or another private action. I expect to be advising companies on the front end to help avoid becoming ensnared in a federal or state legal issue, then advising them when there is an incident, then helping them should it turn into an actual enforcement action or litigation, so legal services for the full cycle of an issue….

“…The innovators that are trying to break in, that’s who I hope to continue to support in private practice. A lot of innovators, the companies that are disrupting the way we think about business, are in Silicon Valley. As they disrupt the marketplace they’re also in the position of disrupting the regulatory and legal structure that we’ve set up. Helping them deal with the problems that come from being disruptive is a space where I can offer them particular value….”

Given tax-exempt Columbia and Senator Gillibrand’s current and historic connection to BSF, it’s not likely that Columbia’s Journalism School or Gillibrand will examine very much whether or not it’s ethical for a former FCC enforcement officer to apparently walk through “the revolving door,” to “switch sides” and begin working as a “hired gun”-lawyer for corporate clients the FCC is purportedly regulating.

Nor is it likely that U.S. Senator Gillibrand will be eager to push for more federal legislation that would, for example, compel Columbia to pay a fair share of federal taxes or limit the amount of money that the co-founders, chairman and managing partner at Columbia Board of Trustees’ Chair Schiller’s BSF law firm are allowed to contribute each year to politically partisan Democratic Party or Republican Party campaign committees and organizations in the United States.

Yet is this “what democracy” is supposed to “look like” at Columbia “BSF” University in 2017?

Columbia's Baker Athletic Complex Land: Donated By Exploiter of Black Convict Labor?

As Cara Maines reported in a Feb. 7, 2017 Columbia Daily Spectator article, research done by  Columbia University Professor of History Eric Foner and his students, as part of the Columbia University and Slavery Project, “found that most of the early presidents and trustees owned slaves, some donors profited from slave trade in the West Indies, and most students came from slave-owning families;” and “at least one student, the stepson of George Washington, brought a slave to what was then King's College.”

But what perhaps should also be mentioned is that the 26 acres of Upper Manhattan land upon which Columbia University’s Baker Athletics Complex stands was purchased in 1921 by a U.S. Steel Corporation director and major stockholder named George F. Baker--whose firm’s Tennessee Coal and Iron [TCI] subsidiary apparently profited in Alabama from the exploitation of forced African-American convict labor in the early 20^th century. As labor and human rights lawyer Daniel Kovalik noted in a July 4, 2008 Pittsburgh Post- Gazette article:

 

“What came to many of us as a revelation this year, presented by the Wall Street Journal's Douglas A. Blackmon in his book, Slavery by Another Name, is that the enslavement of tens of thousands of black Americans in the South did not end in 1865…As Mr. Blackmon explains..., southern political and industrial leaders…began to arrest blacks en masse on baseless charges, including the overly broad `"crime’ of vagrancy (i.e., standing around unoccupied), `offensive conduct,’ talking to white women or any other trumped-up offense…

“The targeted black citizen was then hauled before a judge or justice of the peace, pressured by implied threats of violence into confessing to a crime, and fined for both the crime and the "costs" incurred by the arresting officer, the judge and witnesses. The accused was then offered to an industrialist or farmer who offered to pay the exorbitant fines and costs in return for the accused signing a contract of indentured servitude…One of the largest users of forced labor was Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, which purchased a coal mine -- indeed, a slave mine -- from the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. at the beginning of the 20th century. U.S. Steel signed a lease with the state of Alabama to acquire hundreds of prisoners, almost all black and almost all arrested on absurd charges, who it put to work in its Alabama mine No. 12. The many laborers who died during their periods of servitude either were buried in unmarked graves or burned inside the mines.

“As Mr. Blackmon notes in his book, U.S. Steel, unlike some companies that had used prison/slave labor during the late 19th and early 20th century, has never…paid compensation to the families of victims….”

According to an Apr. 19, 2012 TomDispatch.com article by Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman, “convicts were leased to…Tennessee Coal and Iron (TC&I), a major producer across the South, especially in the booming region around Birmingham, Alabama, “more than a quarter of the coal coming out of Birmingham’s pits was then mined by prisoners” and “by the turn of the century, TC&I had been folded into J.P. Morgan’s United States Steel complex, which also relied heavily on prison laborers.”

 

Owning $5,965,000 (equivalent to around $83,245,000 in 2017 dollars) of U.S. Steel stock in the early 1920’s, George F. Baker was the largest individual owner of stock in TC&I’s parent company, according to a May 4, 1924 Time magazine article. And, coincidentally, as Columbia University’s website notes, “the tract of land on which the Baker Athletics Complex stands was purchased for the University on December 30, 1921 by financier George F. Baker” as a $700,000 (equivalent to around $8,711,000 in 2017 dollars gift); and “the 26-acre area was dedicated in April, 1922 and hosted spring football practice that same year.”

A long-time president of the First National Bank of New York (which eventually merged with Citicorp’s Citibank in 1955), Baker was “closely associated with” the late 19^th-century and early 20^th-century U.S. robber-baron, monopolist and Wall Street banker J.P. Morgan “in his manifold enterprises,” according to Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais’s 1955 book, Labor’s Untold Story. The same book also noted that “Morgan and associates organized super-trusts in steel (U.S. Steel), shipping (International Mercantile Marine), and agricultural machinery (International Harvester);” and it also “had its hands in other fields—the railroads (where…some 30,000 miles of railway were controlled), anthracite coal (where from two-thirds to three-quarters of the entire shipment was in Morgan hands).” In addition, other Morgan monopolies included electrical machinery (General Electric), communications (AT &T, Western Union), traction companies (IRT in New York, Hudson & Manhattan), and insurance (Equitable Life).” 

Columbia University Apartheid Divest Student Group's April 28, 2016 Letter To Columbia President Bollinger

In an April 28, 2016 letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, the Columbia and Barnard student group that is campaigning for an end to the Columbia University administration's policy of owning stock in U.S.-based transnational corporations that profit from their investments in an Israeli economy whose government continues to violate Palestinian human rights and democratic national self-determination rights--Columbia University Apartheid Divest--stated the following:

"April 28, 2016

"To the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing and President Bollinger,

"In 1784, the Columbia community renamed King’s College in order to speak to the independence of the nascent U.S. American nation-state. Columbia University emerges from a historical moment that, to this day, continues to structure and inform our relations to this land and its original peoples, the Lenape Nation. Leading up to that moment and to this day, Columbia University has been invested in the practices of settler-colonial occupation.

"We are students representing Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a campaign launched by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Barnard/Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace. We call on the University to divest its stocks, funds, and endowment from companies that profit from the State of Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian human rights through its ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid. This campaign directly responds to a choice made by Palestinian civil society to call for international solidarity.

"Our demands carry the voices of over a thousand community members, including 601 undergraduate students, 190 graduate students, 103 alumni, 75 faculty, and 12 staff members, who have attached their name to our petition, as well as the expressed endorsement of the following groups representing a diversity of Columbia community members: Barnard-Columbia Socialists, Columbia Divest for Climate Justice, Columbia Muslim Students Association, Columbia Queer Alliance, Columbia University Black Students’ Organization, Columbia University Turath, Divest Barnard from Fossil Fuels, GendeRevolution, No Red Tape, and Student-Worker Solidarity.

"We are writing to you, knowing of and trusting in President Bollinger's stated vision of Columbia as a "Global University." In order to uphold a commitment to this vision, the trustees and administration must fulfill their role not only by accepting students from all over the world, but also by taking a stand against regimes that violate basic human rights and the structures by which they are supported. This call extends to Columbia recognizing its past and present role as a colonial institution, one that was built through the practice of slaveryand one that continues in a city founded on broken treaties, and its present complicity in gentrification and displacement through its rapid expansion into Manhattanvile. Given Columbia’s recent divestment from the US private prison system, we are encouraged by the precedent our University community has set by denouncing racial profiling and disproportionate standards of prosecution.

"Our institution should not be considered separate from those affected by and complicit in Israeli human rights violations; impacted communities include students, academics, people of color, indigenous people, religious and gender minorities, refugees, Israelis, and Palestinians both in Palestine and its diaspora. Columbia's investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid has communicated to us that the fundamental dignity and worth of these communities is not the priority of this university.

"We are also writing to you in recognition and respect of your mission and commitment to socially responsible investment. By investing in companies such as Caterpillar, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Elbit Systems, Mekorot, Hapoalim, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, Columbia actively supports Israel’s violations of international law. The University profits from the illegal military Occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights and Siege of Gaza, the destruction of Palestinian homes and construction of illegal settlements, the restriction of freedom of movement and the surveillance and policing apparatus that is the Apartheid wall, the theft of Palestinian resources, and the unequal treatment of Palestinians under the law.

"One such company in which the University is directly invested is Doosan Infracore co. Ltd., whose products include construction equipment used to build at least one illegal settlement in the West Bank, the Leshem settlement. Doosan also owns the Bobcat Company, whose machinery was used in the construction of the apartheid wall and multiple security checkpoints along the wall. Other University investments show us that divestment from human rights violations is not only moral, but can also be economically successful. The University is currently directly invested in CRH PLC, a corporation which chose to divest from Israel in 2015. CRH has reported a strong post-divestment growth in profit, highlighting the feasibility of making socially responsible and still profitable investment decisions.

"The Advisory Committee's annual reports indicate a continued commitment to ensure that the University's investments meet specific social and moral standards. Your audits of these investments with respect to the private prison industry are a commendable instance of this commitment. We believe that this commitment also requires consideration of the human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, abuses associated with and perpetrated by companies in which we may be invested.

  

"In light of this, faculty members across various departments presented a proposal in 2002 calling for an end to our investment in all firms that supplied Israel's military with arms and military hardware. Students, alumni, faculty, and staff all agreed to attach their name to the 2002 proposal, hoping that our institution would end their complicity in Israel's use of asymmetrical and excessive violence against Palestinian civilians. In the 14 years since this proposal was rejected, Israel has ramped up its violence towards these civilians and its illegal settlement practices to levels unimaginable, even in 2002. We thus call upon you now to not only hold our university to a higher moral standard, but to consider Israel's apartheid system in all its forms, including those that do not involve the direct use of the State's military apparatus, but nonetheless severely violate the rights of Palestinians and the prescriptions of international law.

"In asking for divestment, we join a growing international movement that has heeded the Palestinian call for solidarity. Already, the Presbyterian Church of the United States has divested from Motorola Solutions, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and Caterpillar. The United Methodist Church and the World Council of Churches have followed suit in divesting from other companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. Student bodies in the University of California system (Berkeley, Irvine, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles), Loyola University, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of South Florida, and Stanford University have supported divestment. Students and workers at neighboring institutions such as City University of New York and New York University have voted to support divestment. In this context, we demand:

"1.    More transparency regarding Columbia’s investments. Columbia University has failed to make available and accessible the 10% of its investments (direct holdings) to which the public is entitled knowledge. Additionally, information about the region and sector of the full endowment, and remaining 90% (indirect holdings), should be made available to all members of our community in the spirit of transparency and mutual accountability to which the University should be held pursuant and for which the ACSRI was created.

"2.    That research be done on all holdings (direct and indirect) in order to determine if they are complicit in Israeli practices that are illegal under international law. Furthermore, we request the public availability of this research, in pursuit of a socially responsible commitment to transparency and neutrality.

"3.    That the University immediately divest from such companies and make a public statement confirming divestment. Columbia must adopt a negative screen for these companies, to confirm that Columbia will not invest in these companies until they cease their operations in and profits from Israeli apartheid, or until the State of Israel dismantles its apartheid wall and occupation, promotes the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and allows Palestinian refugees to return as demanded by the larger Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions solidarity movement in which our campaign is embedded.

"We would like to meet with President Bollinger and other heads of the administration in order to discuss the double standard posed by the dissonance between Columbia's ideals and its current investment in Israeli settler-colonialism. Columbia University Apartheid Divest looks forward to engaging with your Advisory Committee in person and commencing this process.

"Columbia University Apartheid Divest"