ADVERTISEMENT

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million

A quarter-century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it.

Donald Trump was demanding $400 million from Columbia University.
When he did not get his way, he stormed out of a meeting with university trustees and later publicly castigated the university president as “a dummy” and “a total moron.”
That drama dates back 25 years.

Today, these two New York City institutions — the billionaire president of the United States and the 270-year-old Ivy League university that has cultivated 87 Nobel laureates — have been locked in an extraordinary clash involving free speech, academic freedom and the federal government’s role in funding higher education.

The first battle between Mr. Trump and Columbia involved the most New York of New York prizes. It was over a lucrative real estate deal, according to interviews with 17 real estate investors and former university administrators and insiders, as well as contemporaneous news articles.

Some former university officials are quietly wondering whether the ultimately unsuccessful property transaction sowed the seeds of Mr. Trump’s current focus on Columbia. His administration has demanded that the university turn over vast control of its policies and even curricular decisions in its effort to quell antisemitism on campus. It has also canceled federal grants and contracts at Columbia — valued at $400 million.

On Friday, Columbia conceded some of Mr. Trump’s demands regarding its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department. The move alarmed some faculty members who worried that the university agreed to the changes in an effort to win back the full $400 million. The Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment.

read more:

does anyone think....

that several people on board the trump train might find themselves on the outside looking in? after all, he's shown that he will throw anyone under the bus in a heart beat. i was watching an MSNBC program recently and a guy mentioned an oligarch that cuddled up to putin thinking he was good. as the pundint said. he was for a year, year and a half.
thoughts??????????/

Upcoming freestyle schedule







It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

New US budget change will kick over 200K out of 650K Iowans off of Medicaid; terrible

I heard this from an Iowa St Rep yesterday. One third of poor Iowans kicked off of Medicaid. This is terrible and a crime in a country with $165 trillion dollars in private wealth.

Can you imagine US Repubs in Congress put this bill out which they said would not have changes but did and they cut medical payment help to the poor.

All this will do is hurt and maybe kill people and cost us all in paying for the services one way or another.

So let's say the cuts to poorer people add up to $300 billion dollars. Do the math and I my answer was it is only two hundreths of 1 percent of our private wealth, .02%.

But hell no we surely cant tax millionaires and billionaires an extra $300 billion a year or over 2 years to pay for this. Shameless, terrible repub lawmakers and people. Instead the Repubs keep cutting taxes for the wealthy.

FDR in 1944 said he wanted to work on the 2nd Bill of Rights and universal health care was a top priority from a book I read about this subject. The 1930's or so was when Blue Cross Blue Shield started up as group health insurance and much of that private insurance is bloated and overpriced and to powerful out of control.

We need to get back to making sure everyone, even the poor, has decent healthcare and end of life care.

Birthdays and Facebook

What is up with you people?

A birthday notification pops up. Everyone starts wishing the person Happy Birthday!

A day or two later, birthday person posts a message about how he/she can't express enough gratitude to all the people who thought of him/her on their birthday. Further adding that it meant the world to them and they're so fortunate to have them in their life.

It's as predicatble as the sun rising in the morning. It's like people copy and paste the same stupid shit every damn time.

Were gonna get invaded some day and it's gonna be stupid people like that at the root of the cause.
ADVERTISEMENT

Filter

ADVERTISEMENT