Type: Private Family Foundation
The Eugene and Emily Grant Family Foundation is a private tax-exempt foundation established by the late Eugene Grant, a twentieth century pillar of New York’s real estate investment community. Grant was most known for his long-time holding of St. John’s Terminal, an old freight terminal near Greenwich Village in Manhattan that will likely serve as Google’s newest office space in NYC. Eugene Grant, along with his wife Emily, also served as a pillars of New York’s philanthropic community, donating for decades to groups such as the Boy Scouts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Ronald McDonald House of New York.
However, the bulk of the Foundation’s grants are directed primarily to Zionist Jewish groups and American and Israeli universities, such as the Israel Center for Social Economic Progress and the American Friends of Tel Aviv University. Fitting into a pattern of other Zionist philanthropic networks, this pro-Israeli advocacy is coupled with a column of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic patronage. Eugene Grant was a founding member of the Board of Regents of the Center for Security Policy, a well-known far-right hate group, whose founder Frank Gaffney was banned from traditional conservative platforms. In the two-year period from 2014 to 2016, the Foundation gave almost $1.4 million to anti-Muslim groups, including $1.1 million to the Center for Security Policy and $250,000 to the Investigative Project on Terrorism. It is astonishing to think that a philanthropic and civil-society stalwart such as Eugene Grant would taint his legacy by supporting organizations responsible for some of the most toxic, anti-social elements of contemporary American political discourse.
