1. Ronald Steven Lauder was born on February 26,1944 and is an American businessman and pro-Israel political activist.
49 Facts About Ronald Lauder
1. 2.
Ronald Lauder is the younger brother of Leonard Lauder, chairman of the board of the Estee Lauder Companies.
3.
Ronald Lauder attended the Bronx High School of Science and holds a bachelor's degree in International Business from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
4.
Ronald Lauder studied at the University of Paris and received a Certificate in International Business from the University of Brussels.
5.
Ronald Lauder started to work for the Estee Ronald Lauder Company in 1964 as head of the international department.
6.
In 1986, Ronald Lauder Reagan named him as the United States Ambassador to Austria, a position he held until 1987.
7.
Michael Massing, writing of this nomination race, notes that politically Ronald Lauder 'seemed out of step with most American Jews;.
8.
In 1998, Ronald Lauder was asked by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to begin Track II negotiations with Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad; these negotiations continued after the election of Ehud Barak to the post.
9.
Ronald Lauder communicated a new-found willingness on Assad's part to make compromises with the Israelis in an overall land for peace deal, and his draft "Treaty of Peace Between Israel and Syria" formed an important part of the Israeli Syrian negotiations that occurred in January 2000 in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
10.
Ronald Lauder manages investments in real estate and media, including Central European Media Enterprises and Israeli TV.
11.
Ron Ronald Lauder suggested to Donald Trump that the United States purchase Greenland which was discussed in the White House Situation Room as a trade involving Puerto Rico according to Elizabeth Neumann.
12.
Ronald Lauder has been involved with organizations, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish National Fund, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbinical College of America, Brandeis University, and the Abraham Fund.
13.
Ronald Lauder has served as a finance chairman of the New York Republican State Committee.
14.
In 2003, Ronald Lauder founded and became a president of Ronald Lauder Business School in Vienna, Austria.
15.
Ronald Lauder led a movement to introduce term limits in the New York City Council, which were subsequently imposed on most NYC elected officials, including the Mayor and City Council, after a citywide referendum in 1993.
16.
On November 16,2001, Ronald Lauder opened the Neue Galerie in New York, an art museum dedicated to art from Germany and Austria from the early 20th century.
17.
Ronald Lauder reportedly saw Klimt's portrait as a youth in Vienna and had admired it since.
18.
Ronald Lauder has the world's largest private collection of medieval and Renaissance armor.
19.
Ronald Lauder has been criticized for failure to resolve a case involving the Museum of Modern Art, which in 1997 exhibited some paintings owned by Rudolph Leopold, a Viennese doctor and art collector.
20.
Ronald Lauder has been accused of a failure to act on the case, despite being MoMA chairman at the time.
21.
Ronald Lauder is an honorary trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based non-profit with the mission of protecting endangered cultural heritage sites around the world.
22.
In 1998, Lauder co-founded the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation with his brother, Leonard A Lauder.
23.
In 2019, Ronald Lauder purchased a majority of the collection of The International Museum of World War II.
24.
In 2020, Ronald Lauder gave 91 pieces of arms and armor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
25.
Ronald Lauder was elected president of the World Jewish Congress on June 10,2007, following the resignation of Edgar Bronfman, Sr.
26.
Ronald Lauder beat the South African businessman Mendel Kaplan and Einat Wilf of Israel by a clear margin.
27.
In July 2009, Bernie Ecclestone faced calls from Ronald Lauder to resign as Formula One chief after he had praised Adolf Hitler in a newspaper interview and said that Hitler "got things done".
28.
Ronald Lauder said someone with Ecclestone's views should not be allowed to run such an important and popular racing series.
29.
Ronald Lauder urged Formula One teams, drivers and host countries to suspend their cooperation with him.
30.
Ronald Lauder referred to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and said they were reminders of how "unpredictable" developments in the Middle East were.
31.
Ronald Lauder's repeated denials are not credible because his words and actions speak for themselves," Ronald Lauder said in a statement, adding: "This scandal shows that anti-Jewish resentment is still widespread, and unscrupulous politicians are allowed to exploit it for electioneering purposes.
32.
IKG President Oskar Deutsch alleged that Ronald Lauder had offered incentives to members of the IKG to support another candidate.
33.
In January 2013, it was reported that Deutsch and Ronald Lauder had resolved their dispute.
34.
Ronald Lauder has been strongly critical of business deals by European energy firms with Iran and called for stronger UN sanctions because of Tehran's threat against Israel and its nuclear program.
35.
In 2019, Ronald Lauder launched the Antisemitism Accountability Project to fund campaigns fighting federal, state, and local candidates who support or promote antisemitism.
36.
The Washington Examiner reported in October 2023 that Ronald Lauder announced he was no longer providing financial resources to the University of Pennsylvania over antisemitism concerns following the terrorist group Hamas attacking Israel.
37.
Ronald Lauder had donated $1.1 million in 2016 to Secure America Now.
38.
Since 2016, Ronald Lauder has donated more than $1.6 million to pro-Donald Trump organizations.
39.
Ronald Lauder contributed $200,000 to Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign.
40.
Ronald Lauder pitched the idea to Trump to buy Greenland in 2019 from Denmark.
41.
Ronald Lauder's involvement was first reported in a 2022 book The Divider by Peter Baker and his wife Susan Glasser.
42.
In 2020, Ronald Lauder donated $1.7 million to a new independent expenditure group that opposed criminal justice reform in New York.
43.
In 2023, Ronald Lauder donated $8 thousand to the Nikki Haley 2024 presidential campaign.
44.
Ronald Lauder's brother supported Kathy Hochul's successful campaign for New York governor in 2022, but Ronald himself gave $11 million to the Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.
45.
Ronald Lauder has repeatedly come to the defense of Israel in public and is seen as an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
46.
However, in June 2012, on the third anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at Bar-Ilan University, Ronald Lauder published a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers in which he called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table.
47.
Ronald Lauder has participated in a number of large media deals in Israel, among which was his purchase of part of commercial television Channel 10.
48.
In September 2011, Israeli media published accounts that Ronald Lauder had put heavy pressure on the executives of the channel to broadcast a personal apology to the businessman Sheldon Adelson with regard to a profile that the channel had broadcast in January 2011.
49.
Ronald Lauder sold the Rockefeller Guest House in December 2023.