NYU's Real Estate Investments: Worth $1 Billion In 1990s?

For a “nonprofit” tax-exempt institution, NYU sure owned a lot of Downtown Manhattan real estate during the 1990s. As Skyscraper Dreams: The Great Real Estate Dynasties Of New York by Tom Shactman observed in 1991:

“By the late 1960s, New York University’s endowment had dwindled and its student base had declined to the point where the possibility existed that the school would have to declare bankruptcy…On the real estaters’ advice, the university aggressively began to buy property, especially in the vicinity of the campus…By the late 1980s, New York University had become…(like Columbia University) the owner of more than a billion dollars worth of Manhattan real estate.”

NYU was barely in need of charity in the early 1990s. After the 1970s, NYU expanded rapidly into the neighborhoods that surrounded its Washington Square campus. And in 1990, NYU’s annual budget exceeded $1 billion per year and NYU then owned $522 million worth of U.S. corporate stock—despite being characterized as a “nonprofit” institution. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, NYU also raised more money from Big Business than it had in any previous period in its pre-1990 history.

In 1990 the offices of the NYU administration were located on the 12th floor of its Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South and NYU’s president at that time was John Brademas, a former congressional representative from South Bend, Indiana. In October 1976, according to Current Biography, former NYU President Brademas “acknowledged that he had accepted about $5,000 in campaign funds in 1970, 1972 and 1974 from Park Tong Sun, the Washington party fixture under federal investigation for influence peddling” in the “Koreagate Affair.” But in 1981, Brademas was still named NYU President.

During the 1980s, former NYU President Brademas was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of New York and a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, Scholastic Inc., Loew’s Corp. and RCA/NBC. In 1990 Brademas finally announced his intention to retire as NYU President by March, 1992; and the current NYU President is a guy named John Sexton, whose annual compensation during the 2006-2007 academic year was nearly $1.3 million.

In the early 1990s, the chairman of NYU Board of Trustees was the former board chairman of CBS who sold CBS Records to SONY—Laurence Tisch.

In 1990, security guards on the Bobst Library’s main floor were under orders to question reporters before allowing them to go up to the 12th floor NYU administration offices.

According to NYU’s press officer in 1990, Bill Osborne, in 1990 NYU had “no plans for further expansion” in the East Village and did not plan to construct or purchase any new buildings there in the 1990s. Osborne added, however, that this didn’t “mean that 20 years from now” NYU would not decide to expand its campus deeper into the Lower East Side.

A late 1980s pamphlet that was still being distributed at NYU’s Information Center in Shimkin Hall at 50 West Fourth Street in 1990 stated in an “Architect’s Description” of NYU’s 33 Third Avenue dormitory:

“New York University has embraced an extraordinary opportunity to expand its building program at its main campus in New York City’s Washington Square area. The acquisition of two major building sites on Third Avenue continues the eastward growth of the University, with its urban campus extending from Sixth Avenue to the East River.

“Prior to the acquisition of these properties, the `gateway’ to New York University’s campus had been Washington Square and the famed Washington Arch. The major building program proposed for Third Avenue will introduce a new gateway marking the eastern entrance to the main New York University community. The site at Third Avenue and Stuyvesant (Ninth) Street marks an entry to both the East Village and Greenwich Village…”

Much of NYU’s 1980s campus expansion was financed by an NYU trustee in the 1990s and a former owner of the Village Voice named Leonard Stern. Between 1980 and 1985, Stern, a billionaire, funneled millions of dollars to NYU, including a $3 million donation to renovate an NYU dormitory at 79-80 Washington Square East that was renamed “Leonard Stern Hall.” In September, 1988, Stern also announced his plan to funnel more than $25 million to NYU to strengthen its schools of business. Coincidentally, NYU’s under-graduate and graduate business schools were both named after Billionaire Leonard Stern in 1990; and the New York Times noted in its April 2, 1989 issue that $30 million of NYU’s drive to raise $100 million in the late 1980s for the upgrading of its business schools had come from former Village Voice owner Stern.

As an NYU trustee in the 1980s, Stern played more than a passive role on NYU’s Board of Trustees. In its July 15, 1985 issue, Business Week reported that Stern “regularly” spent “one day a week on his work as a trustee” of NYU. It also observed that Stern “became intensely involved” in the designing of Leonard Stern Hall, “particularly that of the dining room.” According to former NYU President Brademas, Stern took the architect to cafes all over town to say, “What do you think about this, what about that?”

If you walked around the Village and the Lower East Side in 1990, you might have noticed that the number of dormitories, apartment buildings and hotel buildings with big NYU flags sticking out over the street increased dramatically in the 1980s at the same time the number of homeless single men in the neighborhood increased. Although former New York City Mayor Ed Koch—an NYU Law School graduate—used to claim that no money existed to construct apartments for homeless people in New York City, NYU boasted in its “33 Third Avenue” pamphlet that:

“New York University has made an extraordinary commitment to the creation of an expanded residential campus at Washington Square. The centerpiece of this effort has been the construction of four new residence halls housing more than 2,000 undergraduates and graduate students. With the opening of these new facilities, the number of students able to live on campus has increased by 48 percent to over 6,400.”

The Spring 1990 issue of NYU Alumni News also reported that between 1981 and 1990, undergraduate housing at NYU increased by 150 percent.

Some builders of luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan agreed in the 1980s to reserve some housing space in their newly constructed buildings for low-income tenants. Yet in the 1980s, “nonprofit” NYU, ironically, apparently wasn’t willing to let any homeless men share any of its newly-constructed residential campus space.

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 9/12/90 and 1/29/97)

"Non-Profit" NYU Paid Its President $1,291,000 In 2007

The tax-exempt New York University [NYU] in Manhattan claims to be a “non-profit” institution. Yet according to its Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning September 1, 2006 and ending August 31, 2007, NYU earned over $31 million in dividends and interest from the over $998 million in stocks and bonds which NYU then owned. And the “non-profit” NYU board of trustees paid NYU’s current president—a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member named John Sexton--an annual salary of $1,291,525 in 2007. In addition, NYU’s board of trustees apparently also paid former NYU President L. Jay Oliva an annual salary of $375,000 and former NYU President John Brademas an annual salary of $250,000 in 2007.

In 2007, “non-profit” NYU also paid its then-Chair for Academic Priorities, Richard Foley, an annual salary of $553,587. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Executive Vice-President Michael Alfano, then- NYU Provost David McLaughlin and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Health Robert Berne each annual salaries of $499,550.

NYU’s then-Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Cheryl Mills, was also paid an annual salary of $478,866 by NYU in 2007, while NYU’s then-Senior Vice-President for Development, Debra Lamorte, was paid an annual salary of $450,000. In addition, NYU paid then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University International Strategies Jeanne Marie Smith an annual salary of $408,084 and then-NYU Senior Vice-President for Finance & Budget Martin Dorph an annual salary of $342,935 in 2007. And then-NYU Senior Vice-President for University Relations Lynne Brown was paid an annual salary of $316,975 in that same year by ‘non-profit’ NYU.

At least five NYU professors also apparently were paid annual salaries that exceeded $1.4 million in 2007 by the tax-exempt, “non-profit” university. NYU Professor James Grifo was paid an annual salary of $2,362,270, while NYU Professor Stephen Colvin was paid an annual salary of $2,200,090 in 2007. That same year, NYU Professor Alan Berkeley was paid an annual salary of $1,599,507, while NYU Professor Joseph Zuckerman was paid an annual salary of $1,528,477. And NYU Associate Professor Nichole Noye was also paid an annual salary of $1,448,515 by NYU in 2007.

Although tax-exempt NYU claims to be a “non-profit” institution, between September 1, 2007 and August 31, 2007 NYU’s annual revenues of $2,912,112,322 exceeded NYU’s annual expenses of $2,693,188,158 by over $218 million.

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 3

(See parts 1-2 below)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home. Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?

When it was formed in Iraq in 1952, the Iraqi branch of the pan-Arab nationalist Ba'th Party was, at first, linked to Syria’s Ba’th Party branch and, initially, apparently only had 50 members in Iraq. And in 1955, the Ba'th Party in Iraq still only had 289 members, although Syria's Ba'th Party branch had been able to gain control of the Syrian government by 1954. The Iraqi head of state prior to the 2003 U.S. military occupation of Iraq who was captured by U.S. troops on December 13, 2003 and later executed on December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein, apparently began his connection to Iraq's anti-communist Ba'th Party in 1955, when he was 18 years-old.

Yet a year after Saddam Hussein joined the Ba’th Party, it was the Iraq Communist Party--not the Ba’th Party--which led the mass street protests in Iraq between November 1 and November 24, 1956 that protested the involvement of the monarchist Iraqi regime's Baghdad Pact ally, the UK government, in the 1956 military attack on Egypt by the UK, French and Israeli governments. Although the regime's police were able to suppress these November 1956 street protests, opposition to the monarchy within Iraqi military's officer corps increased following these Iraqi communist activist-led anti-imperialist demonstrations..

Inspired by the way Egyptian nationalist military officers, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, had overthrown Egypt's King Farouk in 1952, an Iraqi military officer named Rif'af al-Han Sirri had organized a cell of a Free Officers group within the Iraqi military in 1952. And by the end of 1956, there were 4 cells of Free Officers within the Iraqi military.

By the end of 1957, there were 172 members of the Free Officers in Iraq; and on the eve of the July 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, 200 Iraqi military officers were part of the group. Less than 5% of the entire memberships of the Iraqi military’s officer corps, however, were members of the Free Officers on the eve of the 1958 Iraqi military coup that finally overthrew the UK imperialism’s puppet monarchical regime in Iraq.

But in September of 1956, Iraqi communist activists had established contact with one of the dissident Iraqi military officers, Brigadier General Abdul Karim Qasim. In 1957 the Free Officers' leaders who composed the Supreme National Committee also selected Qasim as their leader. Another member of the Supreme National Committee of Iraqi military officers, Kamal Umar Nashma, was also a member of the Iraq Communist Party. And after 80 junior officers of the Iraqi military joined the Free Officers in November 1957, Qasim met directly with Kamal Umar Nashma in early 1958.

Later in 1958, without the knowledge of other members of the Free Officer' Supreme National Committee, Qasim then decided to unilaterally act to overthrow the royalist regime.

So in the late evening of July 13, 1958, 3,000 Iraqi soldiers of the 20th Infantry Brigade were ordered by Qasim to move towards Baghdad. At 4:30 a.m. on July 14, 1958, Qasim's troops then entered Baghdad and seized the monarchical regime's radio station, Ministry of Defense and royal palace, as well as the house of Nuri as-Said, the regime's prime minister. At 8 a.m., Iraq's Hashemite king and his family were then killed; and when the fleeing Nuri as-Said--disguised in a women's dress--was recognized the following day on the street by a crowd of anti-imperialist Iraqis, the angry crowd killed him also.

On July 14, 1958, Iraqi communist activists also then helped mobilize 100,000 Iraqis to protest on the streets of Baghdad in support of Qasim's anti-royalist military coup; and the property of the Hashemite royal family in Iraq was declared confiscated on July 19, 1958. A provisional Iraqi constitution, giving a Council of Ministers legislative and executive power, was then enacted on July 27, 1958. (end of part 3)

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 2

(See below for part 1)

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home. Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?

In June of 1953 there were still 164 Iraq Communist Party members imprisoned in Baghdad's Central Jail and 123 party members locked up in the Kut Prison. So on June 18, 1953, in the Baghdad Central Jail, the Iraqi communist prisoners staged a protest. In response, the Baghdad Central Jail guards killed 7 and wounded 81 of the protesting prisoners.

A few months later, on September 2, 1953, the Iraqi communist prisoners at Kut Prison also staged a protest. In response, the regime's troops used machine guns against them, killing 8 and wounding 94 of the protesting prisoners.

Following this 1953 intensification of political repression by the regime, the size of the Iraq Communist Party’s membership in early 1954 was only about 1/8 the size of its membership in 1948. But after an April 21, 1954 Military Assistance Understanding agreement between the Republican Eisenhower Administration and the Iraqi monarchical regime was signed on April 21, 1954, elections were held on June 9, 1954 in which the Iraqi communist-backed National Front won 4 of 10 constituencies in Baghdad.

In response, yet another pro-imperialist Iraqi politician, Nuri as-Said, was chosen to head the Iraqi royalist regime's government on August 2, 1954. And on August 3, 1954 the Iraqi parliament that was elected on June 9, 1954 was dissolved.

On April 4, 1955, the UK government then pressured its puppet regime to sign a special agreement with Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and the UK--the Baghdad Pact-- that more formally aligned the undemocratic Iraqi government militarily with the UK and United States governments. An Iraqi poet named Husain ar-Radi (a/k/a Salam ‘Adil) also became the new leader of the Iraq Communist Party in 1955--after he agreed to be the Secretary General of the Iraq Communist Party.

To counter the continued political influence of the Iraq Communist Party in Iraqi society during the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. government apparently then began to encourage the growth of an anti-imperialist, pan-Arab nationalist, but anti-communist, Ba'th Party in Iraq during the Cold War Era. As Rashid Khalidi recalled in his book Resurrecting Empire book: "Starting in the late 1950s, this policy ranged from covert sympathy for the Iraqi Ba'th Party to wholehearted backing for dictatorial Ba'thist regimes at various times from the 1960s through 1990." (end of part 2)

Iraq's Post-1950 History Revisited: Part 1

Most people in the United States would like to see the nearly 150,000 U.S. troops and 200,000 private contractors who are still occupying Iraqi soil (in support of special U.S. corporate interests) to finally be withdrawn from Iraq by Easter 2009. But the Democratic Obama regime is still not willing to immediately bring U.S. troops and private contractors in Iraq back home. Yet if the Obama Administration officials responsible for authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces in Iraq--like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--had known more about Iraq's post-1950 history, perhaps U.S. troops and private contractors would not still be spending another Easter in Iraq in 2009?

By 1952, only 6,000 people of Jewish religious background still lived in Iraq; and these remaining Iraqis of Jewish background mostly earned their living under the monarchical regime as either merchants or professionals. But left-wing activist-led resistance to the royalist regime in Iraq still continued during the 1950s.

After Iraq Communist Party leader Fahd's execution in 1949, a 22-year-old Iraqi of Kurdish background, Baha u-d-Din-Nuri, became the leader of the Iraq Communist Party in 1950.; and on August 23, 1952, Iraqi workers went on strike in Basra for four days. In addition, Iraqi peasant revolts began in the rest of the country in 1952 and 1953.

In response, the Iraqi monarchical regime’s police then killed three workers in Basra. But in November 1952, anti-regime street demonstrations, similar to the suppressed January 1948 "Wathbah" protests of Iraqi students and workers, again broke out on the streets of Baghdad. Organized by the Iraqi communist-supported Partisans of Peace anti-imperialist group, this Iraqi "Intifada" demanded that civil liberties be guaranteed in Iraq, that a political system of free, direct elections be established and that the regime's treaty with the UK government be abolished. And on November 22, 1952 a mass demonstration in Baghdad demanded: "Anglo-American Imperialists, Leave Our Country!"

The following day, Iraqi communist leaders led more anti-imperialist street protests in Baghdad. Iraq Communist Party leader Baha u-d-Din-Nuri, for example, was on the streets of Baghdad on November 23, 1952, "when at about one o'clock in the afternoon the United States Information Service library was burned" by protesters, according to the 1978 book The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq by Hanna Batatu.

The Iraqi monarchy's police then killed twelve of the protesters. In response, the anti-imperialist Iraqi demonstrators burned down the local police station. The Iraqi Army was then called into Baghdad to suppress the protests, martial law was declared and all dissident Iraqi political leaders were locked up.

Despite the arrest of its leaders on November 23, 1952, Iraqi communist activists were still able to organize another mass protest on November 24, 1952 condemning the "dictatorship". But the regime's Iraqi soldiers, like the Iraqi police on the previous day, also opened fire on the demonstrators--killing 18 protesters and wounding 84 protesters.

Another new wave of political repression then began in Iraq. So by the end of November 1952, 958 Iraqis were now jailed as political prisoners and 2,041 other Iraqis were now temporarily detained. In addition, another two Iraqi political activists were now sentenced to death. Then on April 13, 1953, the regime's police arrested the Iraq Communist Party leader at that time--Baha-u-d-Din-Nuri. (end of part 1)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Conclusion

(See below for parts 1- 9)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime’s war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

Despite the political repression and martial law in 1940s Iraq, as late as May 1950 less than 14,000 of Iraq’s 130,000 to 150,000 people of Jewish background had left Iraq to live within the Zionist movement’s undemocratic new state in Palestine. So, to “encourage immigration,” the Israeli government apparently then arranged for anti-Semitic attacks to take place in Baghdad. According to the Palestinian Book Project’s 1977 book, Our Roots Are Still Alive:

“A series of bombings aimed at Jewish stores, synagogues and cafes stampeded a hundred thousand Iraqi Jews in a panicked flight to Israel. Many years later, an Israeli magazine, Ha’olam Hazeh (5/29/66) published the confession of an Israeli agent, Yehuda Tager. Israelis had been responsible for the bombings in Baghdad to `encourage immigration.’”

The “encouraged” legal immigration of Iraqis of Jewish religious background from Iraq to Israel/Palestine began in May 1950; and when it ended in August 1951, the number of Iraqis of Jewish background had decreased by an additional 110,000. As a result, according to the 1978 book The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq by Hanna Batatu, “the Shiite merchants succeeded to first place in the trade of Baghdad after the exodus of the Jews…” At the same time, the U.S. government, after 1950, began to replace the UK government as the major foreign government that undemocratically attempted to exercise a special influence on the internal political affairs of Iraq, in violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.

As this revisiting of Iraq’s pre-1950 history reveals, people in Iraq have been consistently demanding an end to the colonization of their country since the end of World War I. So as the current U.S.-led military occupation of Iraq continues under the Democratic Obama regime, U.S. anti-war activists still have an internationalist obligation to work for an immediate end to the morally bankrupt attempt to re-colonize Iraq in the 21st-century on behalf of U.S. corporate interests.

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 9

(See below for parts 1- 8)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime’s war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

With the help of an ex-candidate member of the Iraq Communist Party’s Central Committee—who turned informer on October 9, 1948—UK imperialism’s puppet Iraqi monarchy’s security services were able to initiate yet another wave of arrests of Iraq Communist Party activists on November 11, 1948. The new wave of arrests set the stage for the final elimination in 1949 of the jailed Iraq Communist Party leader and organizer Fahd from Iraqi political life, along with the elimination of two other imprisoned members of the Iraq Communist Party’s Politburo, Zaki Basim and Muhammad Hussain Ash-Shabibi.

On February 10, 1949, Fahd, Zaki Basim and Muhammad Hussain Ash-Shabibi were now convicted by the UK’s puppet monarchical regime of having “led” the Iraq Communist Party from their prison cells; and the three dissident Iraqi anti-imperialist leftists were given death sentences. The 1978 book The Old Classes and the Revolutionary Movements In Iraq by Hanna Batatu described the final moments of the three executed Iraq Communist Party leaders:

“The sentences were carried out at daybreak on 14 and 15 February [1949]. The three leaders were strung up in different squares of Baghdad city, Ash-Shababi at the gate of al-Mu-adhdham, Basim at the east gate, and Fahd in al-Karich in the open space that is now called the Square of the New Museum. Their bodies were left hanging for several hours so that the common people going to their work would receive the warning…

“Moments before the close of his life, as he was being led up to the gallows, Fahd is said to have exclaimed in a defiant tone: `A people that offers sacrifices will not die!’…” (end of part 9).