Columbia U. SIPA Dean Emerita's 2024 Mastercard-Israeli-War Contractor Link Revisited

As a May 18, 2024 Al Jazeera website article had then noted, U.S. government-armed IDF “attacks in the past 24 hours" had then "killed at least 83 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip” and “more than 800,000 people" had by then "fled from” the IDF’s attack “on southern Rafah with another 100,000 escaping from the” IDF’s “ground assault on the north” of Gaza. In addition, “at least 35,386 people" had by then "been killed and 79,366 wounded in” IDF “attacks on Gaza” between October 7, 2023 and May 18, 2024.


Yet the Columbia University administration still had not yet then agreed to institutionally divest from Israel in 2024?


One reason might have been because, in 2024, the board chair of a corporation, Mastercard, which purchased an Israeli company, Dynamic Yield, from McDonald’s in 2021 and a former board member of Trimble Inc., whose subsidiary—Trimble Military & Advanced Systems Inc.—”has supplied GPS receivers, guidance and control assemblies, GPS receiver application modules, and specialized fabrication services to prime contractors including Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and others in support of major defense programs,” according to a January 21, 2024 GovTribe.com website article—was then Columbia University School of Public and International Affairs [SIPA] Dean Emerita and Professor Merit E. Janow.
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As a posting on the Columbia University SIPA website then noted:


“Janow served as Dean of the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) from July 2013 through December 2021. ..For the past 27 years, Janow has been a professor at both SIPA and Columbia Law School…


“ She has held a number of leadership positions at the University. She… previously served as Chair of the Committee…which oversees the proxy voting of shares owned by the Columbia University endowment…. In December 2003, while at Columbia University, she was elected by the WTO Membership as one of the seven Members of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body…


“Janow has had extensive corporate…board experience and currently serves on several corporate boards…Janow is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission…Janow was a corporate lawyer…with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York….”


But, according to the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP website, “a number of our lawyers” of the law firm that historically employed the Columbia SIPA Dean Emeritus “volunteer a significant amount of their time to…Israeli causes, including the America-Israel Friendship League, the Anti-Defamation League [ADL];” and “for decades, Skadden has worked closely with the Israeli government and businesses on transactions, litigation and regulatory issues” and “represented the State of Israel on note offerings totaling billions of dollars.”



A year after being appointed Columbia University SIPA Dean in June 2013, Janow joined the Mastercard board of directors; and, after sitting on the Mastercard corporate board for eight years, the Columbia University SIPA Dean Emerita became Mastercard’s corporate board chairperson in January 2022. And in 2022, Mastercard completed its purchase of an Israeli company, Dynamic Yield, from McDonald’s. As a December 21, 2021 article that was posted on the caltech.com website observed:


“Mastercard is acquiring Israeli company Dynamic Yield from McDonald’s. The companies did not disclose the cost of the interaction but it is believed to be significantly higher than the $300 million paid by McDonald’s for the company in 2019…. Following the completion of the deal, Mastercard will be setting up a significant R&D center in Israel which will number hundreds of engineers. The transaction is anticipated to close in the first half of 2022. Upon close, co-founder and current CEO Liad Agmon will take on an advisory role at least until the end of 2022. Current chief technology officer and co-founder Ori Bauer will take the helm as CEO, reporting in through Mastercard’s Data & Services team.


“Founded in 2012 by Liad Agmon and Omri Mendellevich, Dynamic Yield’s service uses machine learning algorithms to help businesses…Dynamic Yield uses advanced AI and other technologies…


“`…We had immediate chemistry with Mastercard,’ Agmon told Calcalist. `We felt that there is an amazing opportunity to continue and grow with Mastercard…. Around 220 of our 320 employees are in Israel and we are planning on doubling the company’s workforce over the next two years.’”


And, as a follow-up Dec. 23, 2021 article posted on the caltech.com website noted:


“Liad Agmon, one of the entrepreneurs behind the company Dynamic Yield which was acquired by Mastercard…will be joining New York-based global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners as a Managing Director….Agmon will be working with Daniel Aronovitz, a Vice President at Insight Partners, who has been leading the firm's first internationally-based office in Tel Aviv since 2019…Insight Partners has invested in over 35 Israeli startups in the past year alone, including Dazz, Avo, and Versatile.”


According to an Oct. 28, 2019 article posted on the Insights Partners website, “with more than $700M USD invested and more than 15 active investments in some of the country's top companies, including application security solution Checkmarx, award winning app developer Lightricks, management software leader Monday.com and digital adoption platform WalkMe, Insight Partners has a long history of investment;” and “the firm is a proven scale-up partner, working alongside investment companies to achieve more than 40 IPOs to date, including an investment in Israeli success story Wix…”


Prior to Mastercard Chair person Janow being named, historically, Columbia SIPA’s dean in 2013, Janow was a member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and the corporate board of Rockefeller & Co., as well as also being a member, historically, of the corporate boards of Nasdaq Exchange LLC, the Capital Income Building Fund, the World Growth and Income Fund, the American Fund Insurance Series and the American Fund Target Date Retirement Fund.


In addition, after 2008, SIPA Dean Emerita Janow sat for a number of years on the board of directors of the Sunnyvale, California-based Trimble Navigation Limited/Trimble Military and Advanced Systems [TMAS], Inc. of Trimble Inc..


According to the Forbes magazine website, in 2011, Mastercard board chair and Columbia SIPA Dean Emerita Janow was apparently paid $54,000 in compensation and $228,000 in stock as compensation for sitting on the board of directors of Trimble Navigation Limited/Trimble Military and Advanced Systems. And between 2008 and early 2012, the TMAS subsidiary of Trimble apparently received 50 contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense—whose total worth exceeded $6.6 million—to produce military weaponry-related products. According to the TMAS website in 2013, “ “Trimble's Force 22E”, historically, then provided “military integrators of munitions, unmanned vehicles, and mobile communications systems with a small, light weight solution for GPS-based navigation and timing.”


In 2024, according to the Trimble website, “Trimble" was "proud to support the outstanding efforts of organizations including US Airforce's RED HORSE units, the USACE and the US Army’s MOS 12T unit” and their military allies to “confidently reach” their “targets with precision equipment and digital intelligence..”