As we await Madoff’s sentencing today, we revisit unapologetically ill-run Yeshiva University.
[Many institutions connected to Madoff] not only need to more formally organize their investing and giving along more official corporate governance lines — Yeshiva University in particular has been cited for this type of needed reform. [T]hey may need to address their own unwitting complicity in the dissipation of the assets of Mr. Madoff’s victims.
Madoff, recall, was Yeshiva’s treasurer, Ezra Merkin an influential trustee. There’s been no public reckoning with this history on that campus, and conflict of interest remains the all-male board of trustees’ middle name.
Sure, Yeshiva lost money through Madoff. It also made plenty of money – for itself, and for its trustees. Yeshiva has said nothing by way of acknowledgement of the depth of its misdeeds.
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Update: It’s also a good day to remember this letter, written last year to the president of Yeshiva from one of its law school graduates, Andrew Sole. Here are its closing paragraphs:
[H]arm has come to this distinguished University, both in financial loss and worse, in reputation. It is my view that the harm today is directly attributable to the failed performance of our trustees. As fiduciaries they lost sight of their primary mission, to safeguard the long-term interests of Yeshiva University. Whether their activities were merely negligent, or worse, that judgment is best left for others.
In my view it will take a generation to repair the damage inflicted upon Yeshiva. And that is very sad. But what would be even sadder, and which would also give grave concerns to Yeshiva’s many supporters, would be for the University to continue to allow the current Board of Trustees to serve as fiduciaries going forward.
The honorable course (and we have seen virtually no honorable behavior in American corporate boardrooms, nor in our public servants, in 2008) would be for the University’s President, and its legal counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell, to demand the immediate resignation of the entire Board of Trustees. The University’s counsel, government regulators, and law enforcement will conduct their proper investigations, but the proud students, graduates, and supporters of Yeshiva University should not have to wait that long for credible and therapeutic action to be taken by this University.
Yeshiva has the opportunity to begin the healing process today by installing new fiduciaries that are untainted by scandal and embarrassment. I hope you will take this letter to heart and I wish the University the best during these incredibly trying times.
Yeshiva responded to Sole with a form letter brush-off.
And all of those men, those hands-in-each-others’-pockets men, those Madoff and Merkin men, remain on the Yeshiva University board of trustees.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:24PM
He’s been sentenced. 150 years to serve. (But judge, I can’t do 150 Years! Well, do the best you can.)
June 29th, 2009 at 6:50PM
Van: LOL.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:24PM
Just a reminder, there is no parol in the federal system. The good time maxes out at 15%.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:22PM
Kind of unfortunate that the Madoff case has been like a Christmas present for anti-Semites.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:26PM
No question about it, wayward.