Measure CL Update

CHS STUDENTS TO CL CAMPAIGN:
THANKS, BUT NO THANKS!

A reader sends word that the student paper at Claremont High School had an editorial urging a NO vote on the school district's $95 million Measure CL. One of the reasons the Wolfpacket cited for recommending a NO on CL was that it doesn't make any sense to fund operational costs with bond:

Though all of the 95 million dollars are supposed to go towards the Claremont schools, only about a third of the money will actually benefit schools. The high interest rate of the bond will result in increased prices for basic purchases--If the school was to buy a computer costing $1000, due to the interest rate, that computer would cost the school $3000.

The students are right on this count. Although the Claremont Unified School District and its superintendent, Terry Nichols, have refused to release the financing details for the bond, we do know that the bond proponents have acknowledged that the CL bond will be financed over 40 years and that the total costs, with interest payments, will approach $250 million. The district has essentially stipulated to that much.

So for every dollar we borrow and spend, we'll be paying back more than $2.50. The CUSD board of education's enabling resolution for this bond stated that some of the borrowed money from CL will go towards paying operational costs. It means a ream of paper that costs you and I $5.00 would end up costing CUSD $15.00.

Using the bond money in such a way is no different than using a credit card or borrowing against your house to pay for a car. And like a car, that computer the Wolfpacket editorial referred to is going to be worth much less by the time it's paid off. In the case of a computer, it'd be worth nothing at all, except as a collector's item. Ask yourself how much is your own computer going to be worth in 40 years?

We're surprised to see that many people associated with this extremely flawed district finance plan are affiliated with the Claremont Colleges. Pomona College president David Oxtoby, Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe, Claremont McKenna College president Pamela Gann, Claremont Graduate University interim president Joseph Hough, CGU president emeritus John Maguire, retired CMC president Jack Stark, and others like Pomona College professor David Menefee-Libey have all endorsed CL.

Yet, if those same parties tried to run their own institutions with bond money financed as proposed under Measure CL, the trustees of their respective colleges be screaming bloody murder. It's simply foolish to spend money in such a way, and the CHS students are on target with their commentary.

Incidentally, this reminds us of some information buried in that the pre-election polling commissioned at a cost of $35,000 by CUSD earlier this year. The poll, conducted by our favorite district consultant, Jared Boigon of TBWB Strategies, indicated that a bond would have less support among people with kids in Claremont Unified schools than it would with people who were older and who didn't have children attending the schools. We suspect that this is because the closer one is to the actual day-to-day workings of our school district, the less wonderful it actually is.

As they do with most things they want you to pay for, the Claremont 400 have romanticized our schools to the point that their idealized vision of our local schools bears no relation to the reality of the situation.

Here's the Wolfpacket editorial, courtesy of our reader:

Click Image to Enlarge

Claremont McKenna College

This is the third in our series of financial snapshots of the educational institutions in Claremont. Today we focus on Claremont McKenna College. This information is taken from the fiscal year 2004-2005 IRS form 990 filed by the college, a public document. As such it reflects data as of June 30, 2005. We understand that is not terribly recent, but more recent data are not readily available. For CMC, the 990 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006 is available. The comparative numbers are in red.

See here for additional general information on this series. For comparison, see the data for Pomona College here, and for Scripps College here.

Tuition and Fees: $32,476,332 (added to post on 6/4/08 by request. $34,487,217 in FY2006)

Auxiliary Enterprises ( must be room and board): $9,117,684 (added to post on 6/4/08 by request. $9,817,990 in FY 2006)

Total Revenue (includes $48M realized gain from sales of assets): $112,851,895 ($104,658,547 in 2006)

Total Expenses: $73,809,896 ($74,515,371 in 2006)

Excess for the year: $39,041,999 ($30,143,176 in 2006)

Net assets on July 1, 2004: $399,145,082 (July 1, 2005: $425,891,575)

Net assets on June 30, 2005 (includes $12M, mostly unrealized loss): $425,891,575 (July 1, 2006: $486,536,231. Includes approx. $30M excess above and $31M of unrealized gain and "actuarial adjustment" on life income contracts)

Corporate Officers

Pamela B. Gann, President, Barbie Girl at the Claremont Ath,
Compensation: $306,000 ($316,710 in 2006)
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $61,881
Expense account and other allowances such as college-provided housing: $51,395


Robin Aspinall, VP-Business/Administration-Treasurer
Compensation: $173,840
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $26,390

John P. Faranda, VP, Alumni Relations
Compensation: $155,018
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $20,601









William Ascher, VP, Dean of the Faculty
Compensation: $250,211 (Gregory Hess, Dean of the Faculty in 2008, earned $194,709 in 2006; Ascher was absent from the 990)
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $27,153

Dennis Mulhaupt, VP/Development-External Relations
Compensation (includes severance and accrued vacation): $442,458 (Wow--the Golden Handshake)
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $26,606
Expense account: $15,650

Wen-Chu Torrey Sun , VP, Student Affairs (1989 Striptease Incident in NYT)
Compensation: $123,462
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $13,966






Richard C. Vos, VP/Dean of Admission-Financial Aid
Compensation: $121,707
Contributions to employee benefit plans: $19,954
Expense account: $359

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Employees other than Officers, Directors, and Trustees

Lisa Meulbroek, Faculty
Compensation: $253,061 ($258,122 in 2006)
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $30,426

J. H. Mulherin, Faculty
Compensation: $246,770 (didn't make the $178K cut in 2006)
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $31,661
Expense account: $177

Robert Walters, Director, Information Technology
Compensation: $220,249 (ditto; didn't make the $178K cut in 2006)
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $16,581
(See here for Robert Walters' birthday and month. All you need now is his birth year, SSAN, and you are ready to play the "identity Theft" game.)

Bradley Bodagar, Director (Major Gifts). Left CMC for the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, most recently sighted at the Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law.
Compensation: $181,372
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $21,222
Expense account: 799

Ronald Riggio, Faculty
Compensation: $171,390 ($188,137 in 2006)
Contributions to employee benefit plans and deferred compensation: $25,855

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Independent Contractors

Cambridge Associates, Boston, Investment Advisor
Compensation: $586,988

Southeastern Asset Management, Inc., Memphis, Asset Management
Compensation: $291,201

Tukman Capital Management, Inc. (now there's an understated website: Phone, FAX, email and Yahoo map), Larkspur, CA, Investment Management
Compensation: $262,338

Treebark Enterprises, Claremont [Rancho Cucamonga], Printing Service
Compensation: $325,483

Iridian Asset Management LLC (another one. This one is so exclusive you have to log in to find anything), Westport, CT, Investment Management
$237,948

The Mysterious Case of the CMC Professor and Nazi-Looted Art

A reader alerted us to a story that appeared in the CMC student paper The Claremont Independent about CMC history professor Jonathan Petropoulos and a painting by the French Impressionist Camille Pissarro.

Here's our reader's email:

Subject: The Petropoulos Case

I think it's one of the best and most resourceful pieces of college journalism I've ever read:

http://media.www.claremontindependent.com/media/storage/paper1031/news/2008/02/25/News/Cmc-Professor.Involved.In.Art.Restitution.Controversy-3266346.shtml

Quite apart from what this does to CMC, which tried and failed to cover up this scandal, this article will have big repercussions in the art restitution community. This is the first time that Petropoulos' smoking gun extortion e-mail is published. Even better, details are given on what Art Loss Register actually did in the attempt to 'restitute' the Pissarro to Gisela Fischer...and they come off as scumbags! This is big news in the art world, with ALR truly disgraced.

To think that a college sophomore could unearth all this, what O'Melveny and Myers, on a four month round-the-world expedition, couldn't find anything of the sort... That's just amazing! Were they just not asking the right questions?

Too bad they tried to strong-arm the student, a sophomore, into not publishing. It didn't work.

It's rumored that CMC has now hired an outside PR firm, for damage control.

Sure looks like a Trustee or two had a hand in trying to clear Petropoulos, and even to squelch the faculty who were alarmed by all this. Petropoulos still directs the Holocaust center...

The college begins a $600 million campaign with a kick-off event in LA on Sunday night, with visits to 10 cities in 10 days... Wonder how that will work out?

[CMC President] Pam Gann and [CMC Director of Public Affairs and Communications] Evie Lazzarino both knew about this in early June when it broke in the European press and on English wires through Bloomberg (June 6, 2007). The student reporter knows that, too.

http://www.museum-security.org/lohse.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Lohse

As the reader notes, this all sounds like bad timing for CMC, which is kicking off a major fundraising endeavor.

Charles Johnson at The Claremont Conservative blog also picked up on this story, which is making its way around the blogosphere.

The Claremont Independent's editor-in-chief, CMC sophomore Elise Viebeck, pieced together a remarkable story that paints of rather unflattering picture of Professor Petropoulos, his sometime employer the Art Loss Register, the CMC administration, and certain ethically-challenged corners of the stolen art restitution world.

CMC administrators were concerned enough about the matter to retain the Los Angeles mega-firm O'Melveny & Myers to conduct a four-month long investigation. The investigation found no legal wrongdoing on Professor Petropoulos' part, but a number of CMC faculty members question whether Petropoulos may have crossed an ethical line in his dealings with a Swiss woman who was seeking the artwork in question.

The Pissarro painting, Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps, had belonged to the family of 78-year-old Gisela Fischer, who is Jewish. Fischer's family had to leave the painting behind when they fled Austria in 1938.

The painting was looted by the Nazis and disappeared after the war. It turned up in May, 2007, in a Swiss bank vault controlled by Bruno Lohse, a former Nazi art dealer who had been Hermann Göring's pointman for plundering during the Nazi occupation of Paris.

Fischer contacted the London-based ALR, which locates stolen art for a fee. In 2001, when Fischer first registered the painting with ALR, the service was pro bono for Holocaust claims. By 2007, when the company, which had Professor Petropoulos working on the case, located the painting, their policy had changed, and they now wanted Fischer to pay a percentage of the value of the art work in order for her to be reunited with the stolen painting. The Claremont Independent article explains:

Two days after the [January, 2007] meeting in Munich, [ALR chairman Julian] Radcliffe also sent Fischer a letter, this time to request a finder's fee for the organization's success in finding the Pissarro in Switzerland. Despite its earlier commitment not to charge Holocaust claimants, the company had changed its charging policy for Holocaust art claims, telling claimants that the company could complete restitution "at far less cost and often more efficiently" than the expensive lawyers who took some cases. The meeting with the ALR in January 2007 was the first Fischer knew of the ALR's changed policy.

For the Pissarro case, Radcliffe proposed an elaborate compensation scheme, including 20 percent of the first $1 million, 15 percent of the second million and 10 percent of any additional value of the painting. Included in his price was a stipend for Professor Petropoulos, who had requested $100,000 from the ALR for his services.

In a letter dated January 23, Fischer's lawyer, Dr. Norbert Kückelmann, rejected the ALR's proposal. Three days later Petropoulos met with Fischer at the Hotel St. Gotthard in Zurich to try a new arrangement.

Radcliffe and Sarah Jackson of the Art Loss Register also went to Zurich, only to find themselves excluded from the dealings. "We went expecting to be included in the meetings with Ms. Fischer only to discover that they had already had meetings without us. We realized we had been cut out," Radcliffe told the CI.

At the hotel, Petropoulos and Peter Griebert, a Munich art dealer, showed her digital photos of the Pissarro, claiming to have taken them that morning. According to an account published in ARTNews magazine, they did not give further details about its location or the identity of its owners at that time.

Professor Petropoulos and Griebert then asked her for 18 percent of the painting's market value as a finder's fee. The percentage was to be divided between the two. Experts estimate the worth of the painting to be $2 to 3 million at minimum, meaning that based on the split, it is likely that each man would earn at least $200,000.

In a letter on January 29, Griebert asked Fischer for an affirmation of this agreement in writing.

Fischer rejected his request in a letter on February 1. "I decline the terms you have repeated: that a separate contract for a 'finder's fee' of 18 percent is warranted by you and Jonathan Petropoulos before you actively establish contact between me and the current holders or their lawyers," she wrote. "To me this constitutes a threat: if I don't obey your demands, the Pissarro will disappear again as it did in 1938."

Claremont Independent editor Viebeck contacted Petropoulos for the story, and the professor defended his actions by email, though Viebeck also unearthed some other Petropoulos emails that seem to contradict the professor's defense of his ethics:

In a March 11, 2008, email to the CI Professor Petropoulos defended his actions. "I always endeavored to return the painting in question by Camille Pissarro to the person whom I believed was the rightful heir," he said.

Emails from Petropoulos to Griebert following the Zurich meeting, obtained through a source close to the investigation, paint a different picture.

"If Frau Fischer and Dr. Kueckelmann choose not to engage us, then we cannot say what will happen to the painting," Petropoulos wrote on February 6, 2007. "It would be difficult to give her the names and locations without any compensation. That just won't happen."

"[H]er response is so irrational, it is hard to make sense of it all," he added in an email the next day. "She simply cannot recover the painting without us. At least, I don't know if she would discover on her own the identity of the holders and their current location. We need to keep that in mind. She needs us."

Petropoulos insisted, further, on their original demand for 18 percent. "As we have stressed, we had a deal with Frau Fischer for this amount (and we also hold all the cards right now)," he wrote on February 15.

Viebeck's article also cited concerns in art restitution circles that Petropoulos' relationship to Bruno Lohse, the Nazi art looter, was too close and that it may have compromised the credibility of Petropoulos' academic work:

Petropoulos' next book, rumored to be titled Bruno and Me, will focus on Lohse. Lohse was "a very problematic figure who trafficked in looted artworks and stashed some of them in Switzerland," Petropoulos said in an October 18 press release on the CMC website.

The book-"part memoir, part archival-based monograph, part philosophical reflection"-will recount Petropoulos' attempts to understand Lohse and "untangle his web of lies." It will build on 25 years of research in "Bavaria and Austria most every summer [to] track down the hands-on plunderers," said Petropoulos.

According to sources in the art restitution world, there is a widespread feeling of dismay at the closeness of the relationship between Petropoulos and Lohse and its impact on the credibility of his academic work, especially in light of Petropoulos' role in the Pissarro affair. A historian of the Holocaust, many believe, has a special duty to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest - real or perceived - between his responsibilities as a scholar and his commercial interests.

The statement of "Standards of Professional Conduct" for the American Historical Association directs members to avoid situations in which personal interest "could compromise (or appear to compromise)" their professionalism. Financial arrangements that "benefit or appear to benefit" historians at the cost of their professional charge are also to be avoided.

To Marc Masurovsky of HARP [the Holocaust Art Restitution Project], the Pissarro situation is emblematic of the "dark side" of the art restitution world. "[Petropoulos'] behavior is not becoming of a scholar. I've known Holocaust experts to interview ex-Nazis, but never to engage in long-standing relationships with them," he said in a recent phone conversation.

In his March 11 email, Petropoulos responded to questions of ethics. "I have thought a great deal about ethics," he wrote. "In this particular instance, [I] discussed the matter at length with long-time CMC Professor John Roth, a world-renown expert on the ethical implications of the Holocaust."

We'd like to hear more about the reader's claim that CMC tried to strong arm Viebeck into not running the story. And, what view does CMC's Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, where Petropoulos is director, take on all this?

Whatever else happens, the reader is correct in thinking CMC has a major PR cloud looming on the horizon.