Thread by @James_S_Murphy

With the final hearing in the SFFA vs. Harvard trial coming up on Wednesday, here's a (long) thread on who Students for Fair Admissions/Ed Blum is and the billionaire libertarian organizations that pay its/his bills. #defenddiversity

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) was founded in 2015 by Edward Blum. Blum has a history of fighting affirmative action. He was behind the case Abigail Fisher lost against the University of Texas. @nhannahjones wrote a great story about that case. propublica.org/article/a-colo…

Before creating SFFA in 2015, Blum was the head of the Project on Fair Representation, and before that the Campaign for a Color-Blind America.
Let's talk about Blum first. The biographical sketch here draws on this helpful piece by @JoanBiskupic reuters.com/article/us-usa…

Even better is this 1997 profile in the Houston Press by Tim Fleck. Race is at the center of his work, but Blum appears uncertain about dealing with people of other races. houstonpress.com/news/the-great…

"Eddie" Blum graduated from Bellaire HS in Houston, TX, in 1969. He was not in the Young Republicans.

It appears that Eddie Blum did 3 extracurriculars in high school: Bellarama (drama), Cinemakers (movies), and Entre Nous (french). He's not in the club photos but his classmate RANDY QUAID is for Bellarama and Cinemakers. 8 yrs later, Richard Linklater graduated from Bellaire.

Blum has repeatedly claimed that he was a liberal at Univ of Texas (he appears in no UT-Austin yearbooks from the time) & was dedicated to civil rights. He claims that he worked with future Houston city councilman Jew Don Boney in college. Boney remembered it differently.

Blum claims that he also opposed the Vietnam War. In 2000, he argued that opponents of the Vietnam War should apologize for their opposition.

According to the Austin American Statesman (11/9/7), Blum went to SUNY from 1974-5 (doesn't say which school) after college to study West African literature (he left w/ no degree and went w/ plenty of condescension). He later tried teaching and owned a bookstore. Both failed.

Eventually, Blum went into investment banking, selling municipal bonds at the mall. He ran for Congress in Houston's 18th in 1992, Barbara Jordan's old district. After he lost he changed his focus to lawsuits against affirmative action and the Voting Right Act.

The first case Blum brought to the SCOTUS was in 1996. Bush v. Vera, struck down two majority-black and one majority-Hispanic districts in Texas and ordered the boundaries redrawn. Blum doesn't seem as interested in gerrymandering these days.

In 1997, Blum led his first attack on affirmative action. He tired to get a law banning it in Houston. It failed. A year later he quit his job at Paine Weber.

So, here's Ed Blum c. 2000:
Didn't stand out in high school or college.
Went to grad school; quit.
Became a teacher; quit.
Opened a bookstore; it failed.
Ran for office; lost.
Became a trader; pushed out.
Dedicates his life to attacking affirmative action.

In 2000, Blum moved to DC to pursue his true calling--shopping for lawsuits intended to go to the Supreme Court. His biggest "win" has been gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2006. nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/…

In 2005, Blum founded the Project on Fair Representation. According to its 990 filing, the group's mission was to "defend human and civil rights."

Gonna let that mission statement sink in.

In 2015, PFR spent over $700k on the Fisher case, paid Blum $110K, and received over $1.5m in contributions--its only source of revenue. pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/201…

The largest recipient of PFR's $ in 2015 was the law firm Consovoy McCarthy. The firm remains important to Blum's work. Members of the leadership were present for virtually every day of the SFFA trial.

1 of the firm's partners clerked for Clarence Thomas, another for Samuel Alito.

In 2016, Blum starts pivoting away from PFR toward his new organization, SFFA, which is visible in the much smaller contributions it takes in that year, only ~$18K. He still collects a salary of $120,000 (a 9% raise, for losing the Fisher case, I guess!) for 15 hrs work!

The 2015 SFFA filing reveals that Blum took no salary that year as head of SFFA, but SFFA took in over $800k in contributions, meaning that in 2015 his two anti-affirmative action organizations brought in over $2m. $430.00 came from membership dues. SFFA claimed *19K* members.

Let's pause on that. In 2015, SFFA claimed that 19,000+ members paid $430 in dues. That means that each member contributed 2 cents.

In 2016, SFFA becomes the main operation for Blum and the Harvard and UNC cases. It takes in over $1.1m in contributions, paying Blum $48k (on top of the $120k from PFR), and it ups its spending--including over $1m to Consovoy McCarthy.

I guess Blum felt bad about how much he was charging his members, becasue in 2016 SFFA only brings in $300 in dues, despite adding a 1,000+ new members. That's an average of 1.5 cents per member.

What's bizarre is that the SFFA's most recent court filing, from this year, still claims just 20,000+ members. How is that lack of growth possible 3 years later? And where is the SFFA and Ed Blum getting its money, if not the membership? …2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/upl…

The answer is that SFFA is not a grassroots organization. Its money comes from very wealthy, very right-wing donors. One is Donor's Trust--the libertarian organization that funds SFFA. It isn't hiding the link. It brags that its SFFA's "Mom and Dad." donorstrust.org/why-donorstrus… …

Donors Trust makes organizations like SFFA legit with the IRS and possible for donors to give it money more or less anonymously. In 2015, donors contributed over $83m to Donors Trust.

Donors Turst shows multiple donations in to places like Cato, the National Review, and Heritage. In 2015, there's only one $7000 donation to SFFA and only one $250K donation to PFR.

There's strange one-off donations to pla @TheMoth and @LibertySciCtr that make me wonder if each of these donations is from an individual, funneled through Donors Trust, which suggests Blum might have only 1 backer at Donors Trust.

In 2016, SFFA gets a $250k donation, just like PFR got in 2015. There's no donation for PFR in 2016--further suggestion that Blum has a single backer who uses Donors Trust's anonymous service.

There's several big donations to Harvard from Donors Trust. Here's 2 for $250K.

Another major donor, who in 2015-2016 gave almost $1.5 million to fund Edward Blum's attempts to get rid of affirmative action is the Searle Freedom Trust. insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/2/12…

In 2015, Searle gave one of Blum's groups $450,000 and another of them $500,00.

In 2016, Searle gave another $500,000 to SFFA. #astroturfing

Turning to the now released 2017 990 for SFFA, we can see that the organization's revenue grew from $1,107,442 to $1,443,759 (see 990 here projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/org…)

After launching its suits against Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill in 2014, SFFA really started digging into the work to prepare for the trial that would take place in fall 2018. Not much changed in their 990.

Their <ahem> mission stayed the same.

SFFA's revenue grew by 30%, and its expenses grew by 22%. SFFA spent more than $1.4M on its 2 cases and a new suit in TX. Blum's salary ($48K) stayed the same.

The Fishers remain on staff at the SFFA, but, as in the past, they and the rest of the organization are paid nothing and work for 1 hour a week on average.

As I've mentioned before, SFFA is basically one person, Blum. This is the crusade of one zealot who is backed by wealthy foundations.

The lawfirm Consovoy McCarthy got another check for $1M+ from SFFA in 2017.

After reporting $430 (2015) and $300 (2016) in revenue from members dues the previous 2 years, in 2017 SFFA brought in $5,530 in membership dues. It continued to claim 20K+ members, as in 2015 and 2016. Why can't they just say how many paying members there are?

In its first 3 years, SFFA received over $3.3M in support.

SFFA membership is $10, so in 2017 there were 535 paying members, I guess. Here is the complete application.

Page 2 basically vets applicants to see whether they could become plaintiffs. But it doesn't ask if you're a student, so the S in SFFA doesn't apply to some members.

Page 3: Pay up.

I've been digging deeper into the SFFA membership question. We've already established you don't need to be a student to join, which I guess is fair since you clearly don't need to be for fair admissions either. It just gets worse from there.

Ed Blum claimed in October that the group had 23,000 members, meaning it added 4,000 since 2014. That's bizarre, considering its profile has been raised so much since then. mma.prnewswire.com/media/767957/S…

The membership question gets more bizarre. In this letter from June 3, 2015 , Blum claims SFFA has 400 members. But in their 990, from 2015, SFFA claims 19,000+ members. weidb.com/p18614&g=1701&…

IN July 2015, SFFA amended its bylaws to create a one-time membership fee of $10. That year, they brought in $430 in member dues, or 43 new members. So, they had 400 members at the start of June, but 19,000+ by the end of the year, but only 43 of them paid dues? 🤔

Documentation from the Harvard case shows that only 13 members of SFFA are part of the case and among them only *7* are Asian-American students rejected by Harvard. 2 are Asian-American students who were in *high school* when the suit was filed. So, the other 4 are . . . ?

Harvard tried to argue that this was a group that was not a group, but SFFA won that fight.

When SFFA was set-up, members had no representation for the first year. In 2015, the organization amended its by-laws to allow members to elect one person to the Board of Directors. All the same, the governance of the organization is designed to keep power in Blum's hands.

Currently, the organization appears to have Blum as president & 5 directors on its board. Abigail Fisher and her dad are 2; Alex Chen, Ed Chen, and Joe Zhou are the 3 other directors.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the leadership is 5/6 male.

I've covered the Fishers and Blum. But who are Alex Chen, Ed Chen, and Joe Zhou? Since they are attempting to throw a grenade into college admissions, I think we should at least know who they are.

Alex Chen was elected by members to the Board of Directors in 2017. Like me, he's an immigrant. He came to the United States in 2006, on an H1B visa, to work as a computer-chip designer.

He's from the South Bay, is really into Teslas, drinks Coors (like a certain judge he likes), and voted for Trump.

Alex Chen started the Silicon Valley Chinese Association, which appears in a must-read New Yorker piece by @huahsu. It talks about the importance of WeChat, an outlet for Chinese-American conservative politics. Also cites the homie, @spamfriedrice! newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…

Next up, Jian-zhong “Joe” Zhou. He's a librarian at Sacramento State. Apparently, his son was denied admission to Harvard.

Zhou had 4 degrees, including an Ed.D from CSU Sacramento. The dedication in his dissertation suggests he feels guilty about not being there for his sons. csus.edu/coe/academics/…

No luck on Ed Chen.

One addendum: Joe Zhou's son went to Cal. And appears to be doing great.

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