University funds diverted: Princeton president admits money wasn't used as donors wished

Trenton Times ^ | 2/10/06 | Linda Stein

[freespirited]

The president of Princeton University has admitted in court documents that $750,000 earmarked by a foundation for the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs was diverted to other uses and that she kept the diversion secret from the family who had donated the funds.

Shirley M. Tilghman made the admission in a deposition under questioning by lawyers for the Robertson family -- While the $750,000 is a small part of the Robertson family's gift, the issue of whether the funds were used as specified is central to the case.

In 2002, William Robertson and his family, who are heirs to the A&P fortune, sued the university, alleging misuse of funds earmarked to train students for work in the federal government...

A financial expert for the university has admitted that some $18 million in foundation funds were improperly diverted over 40 years, according to Robertson lawyer Seth Lapidow. He has asked the court to order that those funds be returned to the foundation.

Charles and Marie Robertson established the foundation to benefit the Woodrow Wilson School in 1961 with a $35 million gift, but almost from the beginning Charles Robertson complained that too few graduates of the program were going into government jobs.

According to pretrial evidence, an officer with the university and the foundation, warned Tilghman in a 2002 e-mail that telling the Robertson family board members that $750,000 in foundation money had been diverted to fund graduate students in other departments -- such as economics, political science and sociology -- would "greatly upset" them.

In her deposition, Tilghman admitted she decided not to tell the family, saying, "I'm responsible for that."

And Michael Rothschild, then-dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, said when he was deposed, "I didn't think the board needed to be informed."

[freespirited]

A financial expert for the university has admitted that some $18 million in foundation funds were improperly diverted over 40 years.

You'd think Princeton would be embarrassed. But they sure don't sound embarrassed.

[teacherwoes]

One suspects that the diverting of funds from donors to other than intended uses happens more often than not.

[paudio]

almost from the beginning Charles Robertson complained that too few graduates of the program were going into government jobs.

I'm not defending the university, but just wondering. If the parameter of success of the money is how many graduates work for the government, how are they going to achieve that? By making sure that the government accept their graduates?

[Asfarastheeastisfromthewest...]

....funds earmarked to train students for work in the federal government

You'd think the heirs of the A and P fortune could have done something better with their money.....

[Hoodat]

Princeton has already admitted that they diverted the funds to other areas. They should pay the money back with interest.

[VeniVidiVici]

You'd think the liberals at the university could have honored their wishes.

What a shocker (not).

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Shirley Marie Tilghman

Shirley Marie Tilghman was elected Princeton University’s 19th president on May 5, 2001, and assumed office on June 15, 2001. An exceptional teacher and a world-renowned scholar and leader in the field of molecular biology, she served on the Princeton faculty for 15 years before being named president.

Tilghman, a native of Canada, received her Honors B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. After two years of secondary school teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa, she went on to obtain her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia.

During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, she made a number of groundbreaking discoveries while participating in cloning the first mammalian gene, and then continued to make scientific breakthroughs as an independent investigator at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia and as an adjunct associate professor of human genetics and biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tilghman came to Princeton in 1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Two years later she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator and began serving as an adjunct professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In 1998 she took on additional responsibilities as the founding director of Princeton’s multidisciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

A member of the National Research Council’s committee that set up the blueprint for the United States effort in the Human Genome Project, Tilghman also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project Initiative for the National Institutes of Health. She is renowned not only for her pioneering research, but also for her national leadership on behalf of women in science and for promoting efforts to make the early careers of young scientists as meaningful and productive as possible. She received national attention for a report on “Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists” that was issued in 1998 by a committee she chaired for the National Research Council, and she has helped launch the careers of many scholars as a member of the Pew Charitable Trusts Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences Selection Committee and the Lucille P. Markey Charitable Trust Scholar Selection Committee.

From 1993 to 2000 Tilghman chaired Princeton’s Council on Science and Technology, which encourages the teaching of science and technology to students outside the sciences, and in 1996 she received Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. She initiated the Princeton Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, a program across all the science and engineering disciplines that brings postdoctoral students to Princeton each year to gain experience in both research and teaching.

Tilghman also has participated in teaching and other programs for alumni on campus and across the country on topics such as science and technology in the liberal arts curriculum, behavioral genetics, and the human genome project.

A member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the Royal Society of London, she serves as a trustee of the Jackson Laboratory, a mammalian genetics institute in Bar Harbor, Maine. She also has been a trustee of Rockefeller University in New York, a trustee of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, a member of the Advisory Council to the director of the National Institutes of Health, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[capt. norm]

funds earmarked to train students for work in the federal government...

That money would be better spent on a thirty year supply of monogrammed fly-paper.

[Spacemonkey1023]

Sigh...somehow I expected more of a scientist.

[Paladin2]

Shirley, you jest.

[claudiustg]

In addition to her many other qualifications, she's a crook.

[Torie]

The Wall Street Journal had a long article on this matter. It was quite fascinating. Princeton now has an endowment and riches, and prestige, and ranking, that is right up there with Harvard. It has also acquired the same arrogance. Princeton cooked the books, charged for the capital improvements, and then for the depreciation, which is double dipping, and in general, was about looting the designated fund of the A and P heiress fortune. Princeton disliked the idea of the funds focus on producing talented civil servants for the US government. The focus on the US government just seemed so parochial to the more universalist bent of the best and the brightest. So Princeton cheated, and then cheated some more.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Me, too. I hope she was more honest in her scientific research.

[Khurkris]

Reading the article it is apparent that this legal action has disclosed a long and established pattern of fraudulent diversion of foundations funds.

Hang all of the bastids.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Sigh...somehow I expected more of a scientist.

Dude, she's Candian. Think about it.

[sarasmom]

One may reasonably conclude that diverting funds from the intended recipients is SOP.

One may also reasonably conclude that if there exists a fund, there is a high probability of corruption in disbursing those funds.

I would gripe less about the taxes I pay into Social Security and Medicare, if I had any confidence the money that is confiscated from me was "redistributed" to the people who actually needed it, and met the means testing.
Since there is no means testing allowed, there is no possible way of determining whether or not the people who get the government checks, AKA my money, have any legitimate claim too or actual need for, the funds I have involuntarily been forced to contribute.
There is also no way of knowing how many people who do qualify for "public funds" are denied eligibility, because they have not paid sufficient tribute to those who control disbursement.

[Hildy]

"Prestigious" Universities have alot of lawyers on their payroll...get this one!! About 10 years ago my Mom went to take care of her brother, my Uncle, who was very ill. While taking care of him, she discovered that he was planning on leaving his entire estate (worth alot) to Brandeis University!!! Nobody in my family has ever attended Brandeis. My mother asked him why...he said that his LAWYER SUGGESTED IT, and took care of the details....hmmmmmm....

[Styria]

That will could be challenged on the basis of "undue influence."

[EricT.]

My wife used to work in Development and Alumni Affairs for 2 different universities. I believe this is illegal. It is definately a HUGE no-no.

[Torie]

Hang all the lawyers, Dickens or Shakespere, or Lord Oxford, if he is Shakespere, once said. But then I am a lawyer, so I have a certain level of cognitive dissonance about that. I prefer to delay that until such time as I have a painful terminal disease, or am losing my mind. Then hang me.

[Clemenza]

Edward Devere, The Earl of Oxford, who had the "countenance that Shakes Spears."

[Torie]

One would have a better case, if the money didn't go to the lawyer's alma mater, of affiliated 501(c)(3) school, but to the lawyer himself, or affiliates of same. In California, for a lawyer to put oneself into a will, one must get another lawyer to sign off on it! Problem solved!

[EricT.]

You'd think the heirs of the A and P fortune could have done something better with their money.....

I'm thinking that a few hours in a local DMV will make you wish the employees were Princeton grads.

[Billthedrill]

...other departments -- such as economics, political science and sociology...

Yeah, that's a much better use of funds than that which the donors wished - three of the most heavily politicized departments in the entire university. To hell with the donors - just because it's their hard-earned money doesn't mean that the enlightened don't have better uses for it.

I stopped donating to my undergraduate alma mater when it became apparent that a similar contempt for my wishes was in operation there. They want it, they can earn it themselves.

[TontoKowalski]

Since there is no means testing allowed, there is no possible way of determining whether or not the people who get the government checks, AKA my money, have any legitimate claim too or actual need for, the funds I have involuntarily been forced to contribute.

Means testing is not the answer to your issue. Privatization is the answer.

Many people forget that Social Security was intended to be a pension plan, not a "tax". I don't care if I get to be a billionare, that is MY pension, and I want it.

Barring the dimantling of the Social Security system (which I would prefer), privatization would allow us to have our own accounts, with our name on them. You'd be able to track your money, have some say in how it is invested, etc.

I'll get my Social Security one day. But I have a son, and he won't get his if things play out as they have.

[RobbyS]

Good grief. This is downright dishonest as well breech of contract.

[RobbyS]

Did the lawyer do work for Brandeis?

[AmishDude]

She's a biologist. They ain't known for being the brightest bulbs on campus.

[AmishDude]

I hope she was more honest in her scientific research.

It probably needs to be translated from the original Korean.

[hershey]

Gee, if that happened to the little guy, diverting of funds...it'd be called stealing.

[Hildy]

We assume so.

[Moiraine]

This is nothing new...

Back around 1995, Yale was forced to return a $20 million dollar donation from the Bass brothers because it refused to use the money for the designated purpose.

[Torie]

I have an interesting GIGO statistics case on my desk right now, about the probablity that folks using an ATM machine at at bank will be exposed to tobacco smoke without a warning sign that they are being exposed to a toxic agent. The issue is how many times per day, or whatever time period, will one being inhaling second hand tobacco smoke from some noxious tobacco user, blowing your way, while you use the ATM machine. We live in a strange land sometimes, at least in zip codes more interesting than Ames.

[Torie]

Yale didn't want to teach about Western civilization, per the mandate of the gift, Bass objected, and Yale voluntarily returned the money. Yale in that sense was honorable. They didn't do an Enron thingie.

[AmishDude]

Why the ATM machine? I'd worry more about waiting for the bus.

[Torie]

Because banks are where the money is! Don't they teach that in math class? And they have branches, so one can multiply! Biology, biology, biology matters, in the oddest ways. The signs are now up, around the ATM's, that using them might kill you, as a prophylactic measure. Citizens are now safe from that source of unexpected death, at least for the bank in question.

[RobbyS]

Take the average academic. He has a low opinion of the papacy in part because of all the money that came to Rome. But universities are much more a money racket than the Church of Rome ever was in its days of greatest wealth. They play to the vanity of the wealthy who, no longer having desires to save their souls now settle for fame, or at least the vanity of having their name on a building or on a scholarship. Doesn't matter than twenty years no one remembers them at all.

[California Patriot]

Rat morals in action.

[willyboyishere]

I'm sure it will pointed out by someone besides me that this kind of diversion of funds is also what the Red Cross does. It came out during the aftermath of 9-11, but it's actually more egregious to earmark donations for ONE SPECIFIC THING by the donor, and have those more-than-wishes completely disregarded by the recipient--in this case Princeton University. When the Red Cross does it,it is for the purpose of permanentizing itself, institionalizing itself as a political force ( a "player" with a big war chest) and with a guaranteed future, because they;ve figured out a way for today's donors to underwrite the Red Cross's future. I think it is deceptive and sleazy, but they;ve been doing it for so long they don't see anything wrong with it.

[AmishDude]

Well, this is good, right? I mean one would never guess that there would be atmosphere near the ATMs.

The signs are now up, around the ATM's, that using them might kill you, as a prophylactic measure.

Well, that really settles it. The answer is condoms.

[MississippiMan]

If you think this is bad, the president of a Houston-area college had a check issued from the college to pay the landscaping bill for her new house. And has not been fired. "Just a mistake," she said.

MM

[fella]

Dude, she's Candian. Think about it.

Blame Canada.

[genghis]

a pox on all of their houses
liberals behaving badly
what else is new?

[freespirited]

My wife used to work in Development and Alumni Affairs for 2 different universities. I believe this is illegal.

I don't know if it is illegal because it is a private donation. I do know that it is immoral--in my book. What's so striking is that these people don't seem to think it's immoral at all. They seem to think they are entitled to rewrite the terms because they know better than the donor how the money should be used.

It is definately a HUGE no-no.

Of course it is, unless you are talking about liberals. When it comes to constraints, norms, no-nos. "That stuff doesn't apply to US."

[freespirited]

lol. well, this is a little worse than usual.

[WarEagle]

So Princeton cheated, and then cheated some more.

And diverted over 60% of the funds to purposes other than the endowment designated.

I think where the Robertson family went off the rails in this one was allowing Princeton officials seats on the endowment/foundation board. You KNOW Princeton officials are going to attempt to use this money for their own purposes.

The Robertsons allowed the fox to guard the henhouse. Never a good financial practice.