Liberal Activist and Patron Stanley Sheinbaum Dies at 96

Stanley K. Sheinbaum, who for a half century was a breakthrough citizen activist and patron to progressive causes, has died at age 96.

"Stanley lived from generous radical honesty layered with his own humor, held up with moral values and love. He was a Yes! Yes to love, life, peace and justice,” said Jodie Evans, a co-founder of CodePink and a longtime activist who lives near Sheinbaum's home in greater Los Angeles.

Sheinbaum was far more than a dependable liberal patron, starting with his early '70s success in raising funds for the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower of the Vietnam War era, whose Pentagon Papers told the secret history of that unpopular and ill-conceived war. Sheinbaum and his best friend, Max Palevsky, a computer scientist and philanthropist, and the TV producer Norman Lear, whose 1970s sit-coms poked fun at bigotry and featured the first black leading characters, were called the "Malibu mafia.” They were derided for decades by conservatives who criticized Hollywood liberalism.

Sheinbaum came from an era in American politics when activism meant more than writing checks to candidates, legal defense funds and non-profit activist groups. Born in New York City in 1920, his father was a leather goods manufacturer whose business failed during the Depression. After serving in the Army in World War II as a mapmaker, Sheinbaum went to a series of schools until he graduated from Stanford University with an economics degree. He was hired by Michigan State University in the late 1950s, which sent him to its program in South Vietnam to provide “technical assistance.” He resigned in 1959 after learning his job was a CIA front, an experience that served as the spark for Sheinbaum's antiwar activism.

“Under the auspices of the University, the project hired men to go to South Vietnam and set up a police force. Stanley Sheinbaum was the man doing the hiring,” said the press kit for the 2004 documentary, Citizen Stan. “On a trip to Saigon to check on his work, Sheinbaum realized he was doing the work of the CIA. Further, men Sheinbaum had hired were using torture to interrogate Vietcong prisoners.”  

In the 1960s, Sheinbaum continued to work as an academic and an economist. He was contacted by journalist Robert Scheer, prompting him to collaborate on a 1966 article in Ramparts magazine that exposed the ruse. That led the CIA to launch a campaign to discredit the liberal magazine as part of a broader campaign of domestic political espionage. Angus Mackenzie’s 1998 book, Secrets: The CIA’s Wars at Home, credits Sheinbaum as the first person to publicly expose CIA infiltration of a legitimate civilian institution, Michigan State University.

“The question is, why was I, of the Department of Economics at MSU, involved in such ugliness,” Sheinbaum wrote in the introduction to the Ramparts article. “Where is the source of serious intellectual criticism that would help us avoid future Vietnams? Serious ideological controversy is dead and with it the perspective for judgment.”

Sheinbaum began speaking at antiwar rallies around the country and twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress, his Los Angeles Times obituary reported. In 1971, Sheinbaum turned to raising money for Ellsberg’s legal defense, and helped bring in $1 million. When it was revealed in Ellsberg's trial that Nixon White House operatives had broken into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, the revelation hastened President Nixon’s eventual resignation.

Sheinbaum married into the family of movie mogul Harry Warner, helping him gain access to the wealth he skillfully managed and which supported his philanthropy. From 1972 through 1982, he chaired the fundraising efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which pursued desegregation of the Los Angeles school district and fought the city’s police department over using chokeholds and battering rams.

Sheinbaum left the ACLU when he was appointed regent to the University of California, where, among other things, he examined its investments from a social justice perspective and called for divestment from apartheid South Africa. In 1988, he was asked by Swedish diplomats to create a group of American Jewish leaders to meet with leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and urge them to adopt the American terms for opening peace talks. Those terms included renouncing terrorism and accepting Israel as a state.

“At the end of the Stockholm negotiations [1988], Sheinbaum was photographed with his arm around [PLO chairman Yassir] Arafat, an unpardonable sin to many American Jews,” the Times said. “Sheinbaum later said that he felt no guilt over his role in the Stockholm summit.” That helped lead to the 1993 White House meeting between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated by a right-wing extremist.

In 1991, Sheinbaum told Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley that he was interested in being on the city’s police commission. He was appointed two weeks after the 1992 police beating of Rodney King was captured on video and caused riots in the city. He led the action on the commission that eventually replaced L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates. “Stanley Steinbaum was supposed to be an irritant. He proved to be one—a pain in the ass, most of the time,” Gates told filmmakers who profiled his political career in Citizen Stan.

In between his more public activism, he opened his home to stars of the entertainment and political worlds, the Times said, saying he “regularly gathered moguls, presidents, celebrities and activists in his Brentwood living room to sip wine and debate the issues of the day. King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Norman Lear, Barbara Streisand and Warren Beatty were among the many famous faces.”

Not mentioned in the Times obituary was Bernie Sanders, who held one of two Los Angeles fundraisers early in his presidential campaign in June 2015 at Sheinbaum's home.