Columbia U. Prof. Clinton's 2016 Campaign Chair Speaking at Columbia?

On April 16, 2024, the former political campaign chair for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign of current Columbia University Professor and Columbia University “Institute of Global Politics [IGP]” Director Hillary Clinton—longtime Democratic Party political operative John Podesta—is scheduled to be a featured speaker at a Columbia University-sponsored event on Columbia’s Upper West Side campus. As the student newspaper of Tel Aviv University-affiliated Columbia University reported in a March 27, 2024 article, “John Podesta…will be the featured speaker for the 11th annual Columbia Global Energy Summit at Lerner Hall on April 16, the Center on Global Energy Policy announced in…email to students.”

But as a Ballotpedia website entry for Podesta recalled, “in February 2015, Podesta took up the position of chair of Hillary Clinton's PAC Hillary for America, the official Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign” and “as chairman of the campaign, Podesta” was “active in fundraising, strategy, and staff management;” and “in an April 2016 piece in Time, the magazine outlined Podesta's role in Clinton's campaign: `It has been Podesta— part coach, part gatekeeper, judge and jury, director, fundraiser, policy wonk and strategist—who has overseen the Clinton effort.’…”

Prior to chairing the 2016 presidential campaign of Columbia Professor Hillary Clinton, which opposed the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries campaign of Bernie Sanders (who was then supported by most democratic socialist college students in the USA prior to July 2016), Podesta had, historically, worked for Columbia Professor Clinton’s husband during the 1990s. As the Center for American Progress [CAP] NGO website noted—prior to Podesta leaving his position as CAP’s board chair in September 2022:

“Prior to founding the Center in 2003, Podesta served as White House chief of staff to President William J. Clinton. He served in the president's cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council. While in the White House, he also served as both an assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff…”

And during the first decade of the 21st-century, Podesta sat on the board of the Century Foundation—when a now-deceased former Columbia University provost, Alan Brinkley (the son of a former 20th-century NBC evening news anchor), was then also the chairman of the Century Foundation board.

Tax-exempt foundations like the Ford Foundation are not supposed to be involved in politically partisan politics. Yet after a 1980s Columbia University graduate, Barack Obama, was inaugurated in January 2009 (following the start of the Israeli government’s December 2008-January 2009 military actions in Gaza), the Ford Foundation (according to the grant data base on its website) then gave 18 “charitable grants,” totaling over $6.1 million to the “Center for American Progress” NGO of John Podesta— who had also been the co-chair of the Obama campaign’s transition team during and after the 2008 U.S. presidential election. As Jonathan Alter noted in his 2010-published book, The Promise: President Obama Year One:

“The Obama transition team was run by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff…In mid-October [2008] Obama held a secret meeting in a…Reno hotel room to talk about the White House staff…It was important that no word of the meeting leak. Two of Bill Clinton’s chiefs of staff, Podesta and Erskine Bowles, flew out for the meeting, and a third, Leon Panetta, was on the phone…It sometimes seemed as if Obama was staffing his administration through a single Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress, founded and run by John Podesta...More than 50 people from CAP would join the administration...”

According to CAP’s website, Podesta had “coordinated the priorities of the incoming” Obama “administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees…..”

According to the 2022 Form 990 financial filing of the Center for American Progress [CAP], between Jan. 1, 2022 and Dec. 31, 2022—during which the CAP board chair for his final 9 months was Podesta—the “non-profit" CAP NGO by then was collecting over $39. 2 million in “charitable grant” contributions from foundations; and, in turn, during that same year CAP gave a $4.6 million grant, itself, to its related CAP Action Fund, paid the then-president/CEO of CAP and CAP’s related organizations a total annual compensation of around $444,000 , and paid 6 other CAP executives total annual compensations exceeding $200,000.

And according to CAP’s website, “charitable grants” of $1 million or more were given to the “non-profit” NGO of Columbia Professor Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chair in 2022 by one “anonymous” donor, by Andrew Hauptman, by Eric and Stacey Mindich and by each of the following foundations: the Bloomberg Philanthropies; the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the Sandler Foundation; the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.

In addition, “charitable grants” of between $500,000 and $999,000 were also given in 2022 to Podesta’s CAP NGO by 3 “anonymous” donors and by the Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine Family Fund, the National Philanthropic Trust, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Siegel Family Endowment.

Coincidentally, as Jonathan Alter recalled in The Promise: President Obama, Year One book, “the idea of choosing” current Columbia University Professor Clinton “for Secretary of State was first raised” historically, “by John Podesta in small meetings over the summer [of 2008].” And as the same book observed:

“Bill Clinton…wanted her to take the job…He was confident that the new relationships Hillary would establish as Secretary of State could keep what would someday be known as the William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton Foundation vital for another 15 years…”