Tracking the flocking buzzards in...
THE FREEMAN FOUNDATION
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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About the Freeman Foundation
The Freeman Foundation was established in 1994 through the bequest and in memory of the businessman and benefactor Mansfield Freeman, a co-founder of the international insurance and financial conglomerate American International Group, Inc., better known as AIG.
This private and philanthropic foundation, based in Stowe, Vermont, with offices in New York City, is dedicated to augmenting international understanding between the United States and the nations of East Asia. It accomplishes this principally through the distribution of grants in the educational sector.
The foundation, which grants about $50 million every year to various organizations and institutions, is committed to increasing, strengthening, and popularizing the teaching of Asia in university classrooms. It has created the Undergraduate Asian Studies Funding Initiative to provide grants to numerous American colleges to strengthen and expand their Asian studies programs. The dual aims of the initiative are to increase access to Asian studies courses and to increase the number of students in the United States studying about Asia.
The family’s connection to East Asia is a strong one: Mansfield Freeman, a native of Alpine, New Jersey and a 1916 graduate of Wesleyan University, was a longtime resident of Asia and a distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy....
After the death of Mansfield Freeman in 1992, the Freeman Foundation was established by his son Houghton “Buck” Freeman, who was born in Shanghai, graduated from Wesleyan University in 1943, and moved from Shanghai to Tokyo in 1949. The foundation is administered by members of the Freeman family: Houghton “Buck” Freeman, his wife Doreen, and their son, Graeme Freeman, a 1977 Wesleyan graduate.
http://www.macalester.edu/freemangrant/about_Freeman.html
January 18, 2007
Freeman Fellowships for
Law Graduates from Asia
Thanks to a generous grant from The Freeman Foundation, law graduates from Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Vietnam are eligible to earn a one-year Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree at the University of Hawai’i’s William S. Richardson School of Law. The Law School will be able to award two fellowships for study in the LL.M. program during the 2007-08 academic year. Each fellowship will cover the student’s tuition, airfare, housing and meals.
LL.M. students are free to choose their own curriculum from our many course offerings. We are particularly strong in International Law, Comparative Asian Law, Conflict Resolution, Intellectual Property, Environmental Law, Land Use and Native Rights....
The deadline for application is March 1, 2007. Interested applicants should review the law school website and contact Spencer Kimura, Associate Director of International Programs for the Law School, if they are any questions.
Manoa International Wordpress
March 28, 2004
Asia-Pacific forum puts us on map
By John Griffin, Honolulu Advertiser
It was an inspiring St. Patrick's Day sight — Gov. Linda Lingle and University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle seated side by side, sometimes chatting like friends.
Not only that the UH leader playfully introduced the Republican Governor as "Linda O'Lingle" before her talk on "Hawai'i's Role in the Asia-Pacific Region."
Some might have viewed the occasion as a hopeful sign that the testy relations between two of Hawai'i's most important people have somehow evolved into a welcome detente. One can hope so.
But at the least, I saw that luncheon scene as a testimonial to the prestige of the co-sponsoring Pacific and Asian Affairs Council, which is observing its 50th anniversary as a vital Hawai'i organization.
The council is a nonpartisan educational institution for public- and private-school children, community-college students and adults interested in international affairs.
As such, it is as important in today's information age as it was in earlier years. In fact, those years stretch well beyond 50.
What today is the council got its start as the Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1920s, when Hawai'i spawned several major pan-Pacific organizations. The institute, founded in 1925, developed a major international network of more than a dozen national councils, and the Hawai'i branch had school programs. But the institute fell victim to the early 1950s witch-hunts over "who lost China" to the communists.
In 1954, the Hawai'i organization decided to make a fresh start. It took the name Pacific and Asian Affairs Council and focused on international understanding in Hawai'i.
Today, Hawai'i has a variety of organizations dealing in foreign affairs, including the federally financed East-West Center, the Asia-Pacific Security Center and such private groups as Pacific Forum/CSIS and the Japan-America Society.
But for a number of crucial years, the council was virtually the only game in town on Asia-Pacific matters, aside from the underrated role of the University of Hawai'i.
Alumni of its high-school programs include such notables as state Sen. Les Ihara, state Rep. Galen Fox, former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, AIG Hawai'i president Robin Campaniano, Roosevelt High School principal Dennis Hokama, Tax Foundation of Hawai'i head Lowell Kalapa, attorney Colbert Matsumoto and international lawyer Gerald Sumida, a former council board chairman who will receive this year's distinguished alumnus award. Roland Lagareta, now chairman of the East-West Center's board of governors, ran the council's high-school program from 1969 to 1977 and is one of its vice presidents.
One of the council's achievements has been surviving a half-century of ups and downs, program adjustments, life-threatening financial struggles, state budget problems and pressures from left and right during the Cold War and turbulent 1960s.
I believe the secrets of that survival include several outstanding executive directors (mostly women) and community leaders and other outstanding people who have served on the board of governors.
Today, the council, which operates with a staff of five under executive director Lisa Maruyama, is said to be in its best financial shape ever.
It gets money from state government (aka US Taxpayers) for its educational programs, the State Department (aka US Taxpayers) for helping distinguished international visitors, foundations, corporations and its 400 individual and family members.
It has what some call a symbiotic relationship with UH and its School of Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies (SHAPS) and the East-West Center, from which it rents office space in Burns Hall.
Some other points about current council programs:
• Its highly praised high-school program, which has included 70,000 students in after-school clubs over 50 years, is much smaller than in earlier days, in part because it's harder to get busy teachers to serve as advisers, in part because students now have so many other extra-curricular activities.
But the council has started running after-school classes in world affairs where students earn credits and teachers are paid. Participants are often at-risk youth who have been failing social studies.
With donations from several outstanding Hawai'i residents, the council also runs scholarship programs for students interested in international affairs. Other donations, notably from the Freeman Foundation, sponsor student travel to Asia.
• Community-college programs, which have served a reported 80,000 students, date back to 1993, when the council took over functions of the now- defunct Pacific Rim Foundation, such as public events, lectures and cultural performances.
• The council also serves as the Hawai'i branch of the national World Affairs Council. As such, it frequently sponsors luncheons and other speaker forums, seminars and conferences. The Lingle speech on St. Patrick's Day, co-sponsored with SHAPS, was such an event.
• The State Department's International Visitor Program, which brings foreign leaders to this country, is coordinated in Hawai'i by the council. It provides meetings and other people-to-people contacts for more than 100 such visitors a year.
There is more, such as roles for community volunteers, college-credit internships and a summer program for high-school interns.
At 50, the council is in a bracket with many aging baby boomers — mature, but with some exciting and often-activist years behind them; still playing key roles in the community, yet also looking ahead to how Hawai'i fits into a changing world.
The council will hold a big 50th anniversary dinner Friday night, and soon the organization will be changing presidents. Veteran international attorney Frank Boas, who has served for six years, is stepping aside in favor of Kenji Sumida, who twice served with honor as interim president of the East-West Center. Banker Warren Luke is board chairman....
March 17, 1997
THE BARBADOS CONNECTION:
CORAL REINSURANCE
After Reps. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala) and Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) voted to extend Most-Favored-Nation trade status for China last year, they received an invitation from the China Government to tour major cities in Red China. And who paid for their trip?
Not only the Chinese Government, but also American International Group, with money laundered through the National Committee on United States-China Relations and the Freeman Foundation, reported the newspaper Roll Call last week....
American International Group is headquartered in Barbados and operates Coral Reinsurance.
Where have we heard that name before? Oh yes! In Arkansas. In 1986 the notorious Arkansas Development Finance Authority borrowed $5,000,000 from a Japanese bank’s Chicago branch as part of a $60,000,000 deal to purchase stock in Coral Reinsurance.
The deal was brokered by Goldman Sachs, whose head Robert Rubin is now Treasury Secretary. On the board of directors of AIG is one Lloyd Bentsen, former Treasury Secretary....
The link between the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) and AIG goes beyond $5 million. An AIG affiliate has managed over one billion dollars worth of ADFA’s bonds, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. An allegation that ADFA launders money for U.S. intelligence has repeatedly surfaced but without any direct documentary evidence to date....
Apart from ADFA, where does AIG get its money to fund, among other things, lobbying on behalf of the Chinese government? The answer is not clear, though some indications are available:
(1) In 1995, AIG became the first company to be licensed to sell insurance in China.
(2) AIG is a client of Kissinger & Associates.
It was Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, who advised against harsh sanctions after the Tienanmen Square massacre. . . .
(3) AIG has also been the focus of SEC and BCCI investigator, Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau’s attention . . . to explore its ties to the BCCI.
(4) And finally, AIG is headed by Maurice Greenberg, one-time chairman of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, and in 1995 a candidate to head the CIA.
Greenberg is chairman of the US-China Business Council and lobbied hard (and successfully) for the Clinton administration to sever the link between China’s human rights record and renewal of China’s Most-Favored-Nation trade status....
Whatever AIG is, it appears to be tied into that big, bipartisan, ugly network of intelligence, money laundering, Arkansas, and Communist China.
For more on the Web: Gray Money
# # #
GOOGLING THE NET FOR
THE FREEMAN FOUNDATION FLOCK
http://starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/news/story06.html
http://www.hawaii.edu/shaps/asia/freeman/
http://www.kycbs.net/Kajima.htm
http://foundation.eastwestcenter.org/aninternationalaffair.html
http://www.vlt.org/AR07pp28-37.pdf
http://www.jashawaii.org/pastevents.asp
http://www.jashawaii.org/nl200404.asp
http://www.iie.org/PDFs/AnnualReport2005/ar2005.pdf
http://cfr.princeton.edu/cfr/partnerships/success_stories/
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Originally posted: September 22, 2001
Last updated May 19, 2008, by The Catbird.