University of Portland strips Robert Pamplin Jr.’s name from its business school
The move comes after labor officials found Pamplin, who owned the Forest Grove News-Times until last June, violated federal pension laws in his management of retirees’ money.
The University of Portland’s Pamplin School of Business has a new name—it’s now just the University of Portland School of Business.
The university made the change a few months after its alumnus and sometime benefactor, Dr. Robert Pamplin Jr., admitted to allegations by the U.S. Department of Labor that he’d violated federal laws by selling or transferring more than 100 parcels of property from the R.B. Pamplin Corp. to an affiliated pension fund.
The university did not provide details about the name change in a brief statement that a spokesman provided May 2.
“The association of Dr. Pamplin’s name with the University of Portland School of Business was subject to an agreement that has concluded,” the statement said. The Oregonian first reported the name change.
Following reporting in Willamette Week over the past three years, the feds alleged in a 2024 civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Portland that Pamplin had violated laws prohibiting companies from selling property to affiliated pension funds without specific permission from regulators.
The prohibited transactions saddled pensioners with properties that federal investigators determined were often overvalued, in some cases polluted, and generally unsuitable as pension investments. The transactions posed the risk that the illiquid real estate holdings would make it difficult or even impossible for the pension fund to meet its obligations to pensioners.
In late December, Pamplin admitted to all allegations and promised to make the pension fund whole.
The terms of the settlement Pamplin reached with the Department of Labor mean canceling a couple of the most egregious transactions—the sale of Ross Island and a defunct concrete plant on the east bank of the Willamette River in Portland—and hiring a trustee to liquidate the many parcels of real estate the pension holds.
Among those parcels: a sprawling ranch in Central Oregon and a vineyard and agricultural properties in the Willamette Valley. When the trustee completes the sales, Pamplin must top up the roughly $100 million pension fund to restore it to the value it would have attained had it continued to hold a portfolio of high-quality stocks and bonds rather than industrial real estate.
Seeing his name come down from the UP business school is just the latest setback for Pamplin, 83, who was once a fixture on the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. The empire of the civic leader and philanthropist at various times included Christian broadcasting and publishing companies; Ross Island Sand & Gravel; Mt. Vernon Mills, a textile business headquartered in South Carolina; and a chain of AM radio stations and 24 Oregon newspapers. (The family’s wealth stemmed from Pamplin’s father, who parlayed his earnings as the CEO of Georgia Pacific Corp., then the nation’s largest forest products company, into Ross Island Sand & Gravel and the textile business.)
Department of Labor officials told the Oregon Journalism Project earlier this year they’d warned Pamplin after reading about his unusual real estate dealings in Willamette Week.
“We told him, look, this is illegal, there’s a categorical prohibition, you can’t do this anymore,” said Timothy Hauser, the senior Department of Labor official who oversaw the federal investigation of Pamplin. But Pamplin did not listen and continued selling real estate to the pension fund.
Pamplin could not be reached for comment.
This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon. Learn more at oregonjournalismproject.org.
Story published under a Creative Commons Attribution – No Derivatives 4.0 License.
