Talk:Donald Bren

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Rewrite request and suggestions[edit]

Ylee made a good point, below, about a WP:PEACOCK trim here. I've made some recommendations for edits and would appreciate editor approval or feedback. No change of source material or references, just tightening language.

For the Business career section, final text:
Bren built his first house in Newport Beach with a $10,000 loan, in 1958. He began his business career in 1958 when he founded the Bren Company, which built homes in Orange County, California. In 1963, he and two others started the Mission Viejo Company (MVC) and purchased 10,000 acres to plan and develop the city of Mission Viejo, California. Bren was President of MVC from 1963 to 1967.[12] International Paper bought Bren Co. for $34 million in 1970,[13] and then sold it back to Bren for $22 million in 1972 following the recession.[14] Bren took the proceeds and in 1977 joined a group of investors to purchase the 146-year-old Irvine Company. Bren was the largest shareholder of the resulting consortium, owning 34.3% of the company and received the title of Vice-chair of the board.[15] By 1983, he was the majority owner of the firm[16] and was elected chairman of the board. By 1996, he had bought out all outstanding shares to become the sole owner.
By 2005, OC Weekly wrote that Bren "wields more power than [Howard] Hughes ever did, probably as much as any man in America over a concentrated region—determining not only how people live and shop but who governs them."[17] In 2006 the Los Angeles Times wrote “…Orange County looks like Orange County...because of the influence of [Donald Bren].”[18] In an interview in 2011, Bren summarized his real estate investment strategy: “What I learned was that when you hold property over the long term, you’re able to create better values and you have something tangible to show for it.”[19] Forbes, in its 2012 edition of, "The 400 Richest Americans," ranked Bren the wealthiest real estate developer in the US with an estimated net worth of $13 billion.


For the Philanthropy section, final text:
In 2010, Bren received the National Philanthropy Day of Orange County “Donald Bren Legacy of Giving Award.” At the time Bren spoke about his work in philanthropy, saying that “I do try to bring the same level of attention to both my philanthropic and business ventures.”[20][21] In 2008, BusinessWeek named Bren one of the top ten philanthropists in the nation, with his contributions to various causes such as education, conservation and research exceeding $1 billion.[22]


For the Education section, final text:
Bren has donated more than $200 million to support programs in K-12 public schools and higher education institutions in Southern California.[23]
Many of Bren's contributions have benefited universities in California, including the University of California, Irvine, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Chapman University. At the University of California, Bren “has contributed more to support endowed chairs than any other single donor in UC’s history.”[11] Privately and through the Donald Bren Charitable Trust, he has directed contributions to support its faculty and programs. At UC Irvine, the Bren Events Center, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and the recently-built Donald Bren Hall are named after him UC Santa Barbara named Bren Hall and the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, a graduate school, after him as well. UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry T. Yang said, “Bren’s vision for developing a peerless, world-leading institution offering an interdisciplinary program of environmental science, management, and policy has been a tremendous source of inspiration and leadership for the Bren School.”[24]
In August 2007, Bren pledged $20 million to the recently-established UC Irvine School of Law. The purpose of the gift was to establish an endowment to help recruit and support a nationally recognized dean and 11 distinguished law scholars, and to provide the dean with discretionary start-up funding. In recognition of the gift, the school was initially named the UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Law. In 2008 an agreement was reached between Bren and the University that the school would not bear his name. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school, said, "We are deeply grateful for the Bren gift, but it was decided between the chancellor and Mr. Bren that our name should be parallel to other UC schools."[25]
Bren is a a trustee at the California Institute of Technology, where he supports new faculty as Bren Scholars and has endowed five Bren Professorships.[26]
In 2003, Bren also donated $1 million to the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. The funds were used to endow two academic chairs focusing on ethics & leadership and innovation & transformation.[27]
In addition to higher education, Bren has also contributed significantly to K-12 public schools in California.
He has supported THINK Together, a provider of after-school services for K-6 students in Southern California.[28] Bren first donated to this organization in 2001 with a contribution that helped the after-school program expand its services to 40 schools in the Santa Ana district. According to officials, the contribution would benefit more than 10,000 students over 10 years.[29]
During 2006, Bren also made a contribution to the Irvine Unified School District in Irvine, California, in the amount of $20 million. This donation would be used by the district to hire art, music and science teachers. The funding would benefit students in grades fourth through sixth over a 10-year period, giving them access to music, arts and science programs.[23] This contribution is in addition to the $25 million that Bren provided to Irvine schools in 2000.[30] According to Tim Shaw, former chief executive officer of the Irvine Public Schools Foundation, the annual gift “seeded the strong public support of elementary arts, music and science instruction.”[29]


For the Conservation section, final text:
In March 2009, he was ranked 9th[31] in The (London) Sunday Times' "Green Rich List"—a list of the 100 wealthiest people who have either invested in green technology/businesses or made large contributions to environmental causes.[32] Bren's placement on the list was due to his $20 million in donations to UC Santa Barbara's School of Environmental Science.[33]
Throughout a 30-year time span, Bren donated 50,000 acres (200 km2) of land to Orange County, California, to be used for parks, greenways, recreation and wilderness preserves.[34] The donated land fulfills Bren’s plans and commitment to preserve more than 50-percent of historic Irvine Ranch of 93,000 acres (380 km2).[34] Of this, 40,000 acres (160 km2) were designated as the Irvine Ranch National Natural Landmark.[35] During the 2006 ceremony at Crystal Cove State Park to celebrate this designation, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said “it is really a spectacular gift that [Bren’s] given to [California]. Donald Bren is…the ultimate of generosity. Not only what he contributes to the environment, but what he contributes continuously to the community, if it is in education, if it is in arts, if it is music, if it is the environment, the 10s of millions of dollars he’s invested in the environment, to protect the environment..” [36]
In 2008, the state of California also designated the land as the first California Natural Landmark because of the land’s ecological value. The protected land, once a part of Irvine Ranch, is operated by The Irvine Ranch Conservancy.[35] Recently, Bren completed his pledge to set aside more than 50,000 acres of the original 93,000 acre ranch as open space by designating 20,000 acres (81 km2) to Orange County, California, as an open-space and parklands gift in June 2010. The gift was accepted in a unanimous decision by the Orange County Board of Supervisors and was the largest donation of private property to public ownership in Orange County history.[34] In a ceremony in the same year, he was recognized for donating more than 20,000 acres of pristine wilderness that he gave to Orange County, asking only that it remain open space forever.[37]
Gale Norton, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, speaking about Bren’s history of land donations, said, “The Irvine Ranch illustrates what cooperative conservation is all about. A conservation-minded corporate citizen is working hand-in-hand with federal and state agencies, The Nature Conservancy, local communities, private citizens and other partners to thoughtfully and purposefully create an environment where both people and wildlife can thrive."[38]


For the Awards and honors, section, final text:
In 2011, the Urban Land Institute awarded Bren its first Vanguard Award.[41][42] In 2006, the Orange County Business Journal named Bren “Businessperson of the Year” based on the company’s office expansion, new building construction and Bren being recognized for his conservation efforts by the federal government.[43]
In 2004 Bren received the University of California Presidential Medal, the University’s highest honor, because of his financial support throughout the years which at the time exceeded $43 million.[44] During the award ceremony, former UC President, Robert Dynes said, “[Bren’s] passionate philanthropy and commitment to educational excellence have helped strengthen the university.”[45]
In 1998, Bren received the Marine Corps University Foundation’s Semper Fidelis Award, which recognizes a distinguished American leader whose commitment to personal and professional excellence embodies those qualities of leadership and character uniquely associated with the United States Marine Corps. Past award recipients include former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State George P. Schultz. The Foundation also presented Bren with its most prestigious award in 2003, the General Leonard F. Chapman Medallion named in honor of the 24th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps.[27]
Bren serves on the board of trustees at Caltech trustee, UC Irvine Foundation [46] and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was elected a Fellow with the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2007 in the category of Business, Corporate and Philanthropic Leadership. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.254.6.84 (talk) 22:43, 12 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Source Material[edit]

Editors should take caution to use properly sourced and verifiable material as the basis for edits to this page. Recent edits made by Ylee were removed as they were based on an opinion editorial (op-ed).

To summarize WP:GRAPEVINE and WP:SOURCES: "Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion, from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space."

Per Dori's note below OC Weekly has been removed in the past in lieu of other more verifiable sources. As mentioned, if you have any questions, please refer to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.254.7.68 (talk) 00:04, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do not appreciate an IP editor lecturing me on Wikipedia policies based on a falsehood. The OC Weekly article is specifically labeled as news (see the URL and top banner). That the LA Times canceled an article discussing the Bren/Caleb Nichol connection is factual; the article quotes a Times editor confirming it. Whether the Irvine Company's threat caused the cancellation is unclear, so the text accurately describes this as an "allegation"; anonymous sources are acceptable if reliable sources appropriately use them. OC Weekly's description of him as being enormously powerful over Orange County is no different from the preexisting LA Times description of him taken from the West 100 list.
That Dori voluntarily chose to replace certain OC Weekly cites with others does not impugn the reliability of all OC Weekly news articles; feel free to complain about OC Weekly at WP:RSN if you wish, but be aware that based on prior precedent you will lose. Finally, Mr. IP editor (User:184.254.7.16 and several other from related subnets), I echo Dori's advice to consult WP:SPA (as well as WP:PAID). Ylee (talk) 07:42, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The OC Weekly story also goes on to paraphrase the same LA Times editor saying the story was pulled due to timing. I have amended the copy to reflect this oversight and believe this is the most accurate way to cite this text. Future edits to this page should really be discussed on this talk page before being made. Based on your extensive edit history I'd hope you would consider starting on talk pages first before making substantial edits to pages.
I have no objection to your edit, 70.7.159.176 (I presume that you are 184.254.7.16 as both addresses are on the Sprint network), and agree that it is reasonable to present the Times editor's stance. I disagree that my edits were "substantial" compared to the size of the current article (90% of which is hagiographic and really needs another WP:PEACOCK trimming, actually). Even if they were, there is no inherent need to discuss edits ahead of time on a Talk page except in special circumstances, typically involving controversial topics like the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. . Ylee (talk) 23:47, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

September 2008[edit]

The University of California does not have a Board of Trustees.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.95.17.217 (talk) 02:42, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True, so I reworded the article to make it more clear that it refers to the Board of Trustees of the UCI Foundation. And when I went to find a citation for that, I found that he's actually an emeritus (i.e., not currently on the board), so I added that as well. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 07:01, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite[edit]

I took the time to look up a lot of sources and heavily revise the article. This being Wikipedia, anyone can edit the article—but please, do not remove cited information, or add uncited information, or remove the <references/> section.

For instance, removing cites to Los Angeles Times articles that refer to Bren's marriage because that those articles are "unreliable hearsay," and replacing them with other (uncited!) information is inappropriate. If you have any questions, please refer to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines.

In general, if there's something minor that you feel should be changed, do it. If it's major, discuss it here. But WP:RS, WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CON, and WP:BLP need to be our starting point. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 07:01, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Revised sources[edit]

I got a phone call this morning (and no, my phone number is not available on my user page) from someone who said his name was "Jonathan," asking me to reconsider my edits to this article. In particular, he objected to the OC Weekly articles being used as sources, and wanted those sections deleted.

Instead, I've found what I would agree are more reliable sources and put those into the article to replace the OC Weekly pieces. I wasn't able to find anything in the article as it was that I couldn't back up using sources generally agreed to be reliable, so I deleted no information.

Jonathan, or Georgesisler, or whoever you are: as I said before, "WP:RS, WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CON, and WP:BLP need to be our starting point"--but you might want to also read WP:SPA. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 21:44, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Philanthropy[edit]

When adding content about Bren's donations, please verify first that they came from Bren himself. If the funds came from the Irvine Company, then the donation can be mentioned on that page, not this one. Dori (Talk • Contribs) 20:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC) something about this could be added https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-announces-breakthrough-100-million-gift-to-fund-space-based-solar-power-project[reply]

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