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.