Who Profits From Upper West Side's Barnard College?--Conclusion

Despite claiming to be a “non-profit” institution which is largely autonomous and women-centered, Barnard College has always, historically, apparently had some pretty rich folks with business connections to for-profit patriarchal corporations, banks and real estate firms sitting on its board of trustees.

In 1991, for example, Barnard’s board of trustees was chaired by for-profit Goldman Sachs partner Arthur Goodhart Altschul—who then owned $3.9 million [equal to over $7.5 million in 2021 dollars] worth of General American Investors stock and sat on that company’s corporate board. Altschul also sat on the corporate boards of for-profit Sunbelt Energy, Boswell, Energy, the Wicat System and Associated Dry Goods (which used to own Lord & Taylor’s) in 1991. And another Barnard trustee in 1991, Donald Pels, then owned $440,000 [equal to over $850,000 in 2021 dollars] worth of for-profit U.S. Trust stock, was a director of U.S. Trust and Tx Broadcasting, and had pocketed $253 million [equal to over $486 million in 2021 dollars] in 1989 by selling his for-profit Lin Broadcasting stock.

The majority of essential women workers in New York City, the majority of recent Barnard College women graduates and the majority of current Bernard College women students (especially the only 12 percent of current Barnard students whose parents didn’t attend college) may not be profiting as much from Barnard College these days as do some Barnard College administrators, some Barnard professors, some donors of tax-deductible contributions to Barnard, or some of the for-profit investment management firms, that “non-profit” Barnard pays to invest in stocks and bonds of corporations that exploit essential women workers and consumers.

And, besides including on its board of trustees men who manage or control for-profit corporations and women whose husbands manage or control for-profit corporations that exploit essential women workers and consumers, Barnard College also partners with an Upper West Side institution, Columbia University, that—like Barnard itself—still fails to pay a fair share of NYC, NY State and federal taxes in 2021.

But perhaps if municipal control of Barnard College’s campus on the Upper West Side was established and Barnard was democratically transformed into an autonomous women’s college of the City University of New York (rather than continuing to remain as Columbia University’s non-autonomous “junior partner”), it would begin to serve the public interest, instead of the special, private corporate interests represented on Barnard’s board of trustees?

And, at the same time, perhaps if the trustees of private colleges and universities like Barnard and Columbia were prohibited from also sitting on the board of trustees of public colleges and universities like SUNY, SUNY would also begin to serve the public interest more, rather than serving the special, private or class interests of for-profit corporations like the Loews Corporation? (end of article).