Gail Furman

Gail Furman

Overview

* Longtime psychologist based in New York City
* Protested against the Vietnam War in the 1960s
* Worked with the Mississippi “Freedom Summer” project that sought to register new black voters in 1964
* Served on boards of many left-wing foundations and organizations
* Served as a board member of the Democracy Alliance, a major funder of leftist groups and causes
* Died on April 17, 2019


Gail Furman was a psychologist in New York City, a wealthy political activist, and a well-known funder of leftist causes. She married, and later divorced, New York real-estate developer Jay Furman, who died in 2015. She was also the mother of Jesse Furman, a federal judge who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Barack Obama, and Jason Furman, who served with the three-member Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama.

Born in 1946, Gail Furman was a native of Queens, New York. After graduating from Forest Hills High School, she obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in psychology from New York University. During her student days, Furman was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. “I was very angry if people didn’t burn their draft cards,” she told a New York Times interviewer in 2008. In 1964 Furman worked with the Mississippi “Freedom Summer” project which sought to register new black voters in that state. She also worked with the Head Start early-education program in Detroit, and she helped older students prepare themselves for their SAT exams.

In 1970, Furman opened a private practice as a social worker and psychotherapist helping troubled adolescents, a practice which she maintained until she retired. From 1973-90, she was also employed as a child psychologist at two of the most elite private schools in New York City, the Fieldston School and the Dalton School. And in the early 1990s, Furman was a founder of the Family Academy, an alternative public school in Harlem.

From 1994 to 2011, Furman was first a board member of, and later a consultant for, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children (now known as the Women’s Refugee Commission). This organization’s stated objective is to “improv[e] the lives and protec[t] the rights of women, children and youth displaced by conflict and crisis.” In her work with the Commission, Furman traveled to a number of foreign nations to assist people in refugee camps. Also during that period, she served a stint as an advisory board member for Human Rights Watch‘s “Children in Conflict” initiative.

In 2000, Furman worked in Israel on a project that encouraged both Israeli and Palestinian children to draw pictures expressing their respective goals and aspirations. In connection with that initiative, she wrote the foreword for Harold Koplewicz’s Turbulent Times, Prophetic Dreams, a book which was released that same year.

Furman later said that after the 2000 presidential election, in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in a hotly disputed outcome, she “became very political.”

In 2004 Furman became a board member of the Democracy Alliance, a major funder of leftist groups and causes. In ’04 as well, she helped fund activist David Brock‘s launch of Media Matters for America, and she served on that organization’s founding board of directors. That same year, Furman actively supported General Wesley Clark’s unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Party‘s presidential nomination, and she hosted a fundraiser for Clark at her home in Greenwich Village, New York.

In 2006 Furman helped fund the establishment of Vote Vets, a progressive organization of military veterans promoting a variety of leftist agendas. Also in ’06, she donated $20,000 to the Secretary Of State Project.

Over the years, Furman served variously on the directors’ boards and/or advisory boards of such organizations as the Brennan Center for Justice, Human Rights First, J Street, the Tides Foundation, Fundacion Amistad, and the Child Study Center of NYU Medical School, where she was a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry. In addition, Furman became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2000, Furman established a New York-based philanthropy known as the Furman Foundation, to fund the activities of numerous leftist organizations. Through this foundation, where Furman served as president, she funneled large sums of money to such entities as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for American Progress, the Center on Budget and Policy PrioritiesFree PressHuman Rights FirstJ StreetMedia Matters For America, the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, the People for the American Way Foundation, and the Tides Center.[1]

Moreover, Furman personally contributed money to the political campaigns of such notable Democrats as Cory Booker, Carol Moseley Braun, Sherrod Brown, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Tammy Duckworth, Donna Edwards, Russ Feingold, Al Franken, Kirsten Gillibrand, Al Gore, Hakeem Jeffries, Joe Kennedy III, John Kerry, Jerrold Nadler, Barack Obama, Chellie Pingree, Jared Polis, Charles Rangel, Ken Salazar, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, and Anthony Weiner.[2]

Furman also made monetary donations to ActBlue, EMILY’s List, MoveOn.org, and Planned Parenthood Votes, among others.

Furman died on April 17, 2019.

Further Reading:Gail Furman, Psychologist” (by Human Rights First); “Gail Furman a 2014 North Star Award Nominee” (by the North Star Fund); “More J-Street Revelations; Moneymen and More Soros Connections” (by Ed Lasky, American Thinker, 10-3-2010); “Gail Furman” (Keywiki.org).

Footnotes:


  1. Left-Wing Foundations Lavish Millions on Media Matters” (Daily Caller, 2-17-12).
  2. “Gail Furman,” Open Secrets.org and CampaignMoney.com.

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