Columbia University's Historical Russell Sage Foundation Connection Revisited (Part 1)

In early April 2024, the Tel Aviv University [TAU]-affiliated Columbia University administration suspended four of its antiwar students (including, apparently, a member or two of the Jewish Voice for Peace [JVP) group that, along with the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine [SJP], the Columbia administration had banned in late 2023) for organizing campus protests against the IDF’s genocidal war on Gaza and Columbia U.’s failure to cut its institutional ties to Israel and Israeli institutions.


And only a few days later, the historically French Ministry of Foreign Affairs-funded and supported Columbia University/Alliance of Columbia University held an April 9, 2024 event in Buell Hall at 515 W. 116 St. in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, titled “Tears of History: The Rise of Political Antisemitism in the US,” that was co-sponsored by Columbia’s “Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies,” which included on its 3-person panel a Columbia Associate Professor of American Jewish History as well as a former interim provost of Columbia University and then-Columbia World Projects Deputy Director named Ira Katznelson—but no representative of either the banned SJP or JVP student groups.


Columbia World Politics Deputy Director Katznelson is a former chair of the “philanthropic” Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees who, as recently as 2020, was also a Russell Sage Foundation “Olivia Sage Scholar".


For 10 years—between 1992 and 2002—Katznelson sat on the Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees; and for 3 of those 10 years—between 1999 and 2002—Columbia’s World Politics Deputy Director in 2024 was the chair of this foundation’s board of trustees. In addition, besides also being a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar” during the 1991-1992 academic year before he first joined the foundation’s board of trustees, Katznelson was a Russell Sage Foundation “Visiting Scholar” during the 2004-2005 academic year and a Russell Sage Foundation “Associate Scholar” during the 2009-2010 academic year—after he left the Russell Foundation board of trustees in 2003. And, according to the website of the Russell Sage Foundation (whose headquarters building was located at 112 East 64th Street in Manhattan in 2021), its “Visiting Scholars” were paid in 2021 with “salary support up to 50 percent of their academic year salary (up to a maximum of $125,000 for a full term).”


Columbia Professor and then-Columbia World Politics Deputy Director Katznelson was not the only individual connected to the “non-profit” Upper West Side university in Manhattan (and a major New York City neighborhood real estate developing institution and landlord) who, formerly or during the current decade, has sat on the board of trustees of the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation, whose assets exceeded $350 million in 2021. In 2021, then-Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Professor and Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company Trustee Nicholas Lemann, who was previously the Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism between 2003 and 2013, had been a foundation trustee since 2011 and was then the vice-chair of the Russell Sage Foundation’s board of trustees.


In addition, between 2010 and 2020, a Columbia University provost between 2009 and 2011, Claude M. Steele, also sat on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees; and, like Columbia World Projects Deputy Director Katznelson, was also a former chair of the same foundation’s board of trustees.


Historically, another individual connected to Columbia University for many years—former 1960’s Columbia College Dean and Columbia University Vice-President David B. Truman—also sat on the Russell Sage Foundation board of trustees from 1967 to 1981 and was the president of the Russell Sage Foundation between 1978 and 1979.


According to the Russell Sage Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for 2018, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, Columbia Journalism School Professor Lemann was paid between $5,000 and $8,000 by the Russell Sage Foundation for being its board of trustees’ “vice-chair” and former Columbia Provost Steele was paid $6,500 for sitting on the same foundation’s board of trustees during that year.


And, not surprisingly, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, the “philanthropic” and federal tax-exempted Russell Sage Foundation gave between 6 and 11 tax-exempt “charitable” grants, totaling between $390,000 and $680,000, to either the Trustees of Columbia University or Teachers College of Columbia University, including: a grant of $75,000 to "study" the “socioeconomic inequalities and children’s brain development;” a $34,295 grant to "study" the "impact of wealthy donor consortia on U.S. politics and public policy;” a grant of $86,825 to "study" about “reclaiming lost data on American racial inequality 1865-1940;” a grant of $23,000 to "study" the "effect of state immigration policies on preschool enrollment of children of immigrants;” a grant of $83,651 to "study" the “life course sociogenomic analysis of social inequalities in aging;” and a grant of $85,865 for “studying the Rikers Island Jail population.” (end of part 1. To be continued)