Verizon announced today that its current lead independent director, Dan Schulman, is now its CEO.
Dan Schulman/PHOTO: Fortune Conferences (CC)
The former PayPal CEO, Corporate America‘s Zelenskyy-like fashionista (wearing a T-shirt when all other male executives show up in a jacket and tie), replaces Hans Vestberg, who was previously Verizon’s Chairman and CEO.
Schulman’s recent corporate leadership decision-making disqualifies him for the top job at the nation’s largest telecommunications company. He left PayPal earlier than planned two years ago after the company’s stock plummeted by 75 percent in two years. During his tenure PayPal was among those most responsible for the advancement of cancel culture and discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion policies. As NLPC’s Luke Perlot wrote back in 2023:
Schulman allowed Orwellian schemes like the penalization of users $2,500 for spreading “misinformation.” After intense backlash, PayPal ditched the initiative, but the stock had already dropped 6 percent in one day. While most of the tech market rallied in the first half of 2022, PayPal’s stock price continued to fall. The firm has since claimed the policy of fining users for misinformation was an error…
Also, according to USA Today, “on his watch, PayPal committed $535 million to support black-owned businesses and to fight economic inequality, part of Schulman’s goal to close the racial wealth gap.” These affirmative action-type policies are themselves unfair and earlier this year the Supreme Court struck down similar programs in higher education. In reality they merely expand racial divides.
NLPC also highlighted PayPal’s discrimination and cancel culture under Schulman’s leadership, and called for his removal from Verizon’s board of directors, during a presentation at the telecom company’s annual meeting in May 2023:
While he’s been CEO of PayPal, that company has implemented some of the most extreme cancel culture and censorship policies in Corporate America, including trying to impose a $2,500 fine of account holders who allegedly promote “misinformation.”
PayPal also terminated, without warning, the account of one of the last remaining pro-Democracy groups in Hong Kong, before it fell to the communist Chinese government.
Not surprisingly, Verizon was also cooperative with the Biden administration’s federal law enforcers in identifying and deplatforming their political enemies, as we pointed out at that same annual meeting:
As we have seen from the revelations in the “Twitter Files,” agencies controlled by the White House censored their critics via social and corporate media entities, at an unprecedented scale.
For example, major tech companies including Verizon met monthly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security ahead of the 2020 election, to discuss how to handle so-called “election misinformation.”
Platforms, including those controlled by Verizon, reportedly removed alleged “misinformation” at the request of the government…
Verizon also engaged in election interference when it abruptly shut down a test run of one of Donald Trump’s most important voter-contact programs one weekend in July 2020, potentially costing the former president millions of dollars in donations.
And in 2021, members of Congress who regulate the telecom industry wrote to Verizon urging them to drop One America News Network and other conservative-leaning news channels.
Verizon ended its 17-year relationship with OANN, while the discredited, flailing CNN remains on the Company’s channel listings.
If Verizon truly wanted to stop “misinformation,” they would dump CNN.
Thus it is not surprising that Schulman has been warmly welcomed on Verizon’s board since 2018.
NLPC’s criticism of Schulman, pointing out his inappropriate and divisive social activism while representing public corporations and their shareholders, dates back even to 2016, when he bullied and bloviated against the State of North Carolina over the “transgender bathroom bill” (known by Bill No. “HB2”). As we reported at the time, in mid-March PayPal had announced it would expand activities at its Charlotte data center by adding 400 jobs, but in early April 2016 Schulman canceled those plans, citing HB2.
“The new law perpetuates discrimination, and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” Schulman said at the time. “As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.”
Further, PayPal and San Francisco-based Salesforce co-hosted a summit in November 2016, in conjunction with groups including Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal and the ACLU, to strategize against expected legislation similar to HB2 in other states in 2017. Up to 100 leaders from business and LGBT groups attended the meeting.
“An invitation to the event…said the agenda would cover battleground states for next year’s legislative fights and ‘a strategic discussion around the various ways we can collaborate in each state,’” Buzzfeed reported at the time. “Justin Higgs, a spokesperson for PayPal, added by email, ‘Through this event, we strive to play a part in helping businesses protect employees, customers, and families from discriminatory actions in communities where they live and operate.’”
Then, in March 2017, Schulman had PayPal sign on to an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a transgender student in Gloucester County, Virginia, who sued her school board because they would not allow her to use the men’s restroom at her high school.
“We seek to defend against actions that violate our values, which is why we have signed this amicus brief with other like-minded companies seeking to uphold critical protections against discrimination,” said Schulman.
Then, during the 2018 commencement season, Schulman told Rutgers graduates how proud he was to cancel plans to expand PayPal’s operations in North Carolina, because of HB2.
“Discrimination of any kind hurts all of us – and is a threat to our very democracy,” Schulman said. “The ultimate point here is that whether you are a business person, a scholar, an artist, an activist or a doctor, we have to be guided by values of inclusion and freedom. These are not political decisions, these are values-based decisions.”
None of these views (or “values,” as Schulman would put it) have aged well just a few years later. Cancel culture and debanking are rejected. DEI is a toxic acronym and policy now rejected by most of Corporate America (at least publicly). And Americans have rejected the transgender ideology agenda, whether it’s letting biological men compete in women’s sports or letting them disrobe in women’s restrooms and locker rooms.
Where is Schulman’s bold expression about his values now on all these issues?
Verizon certainly hasn’t moderated its own stance in support of transgender agenda items. The company still maintains a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which means it provides chemical and surgical mutilation “care” through its health insurance coverage for child dependents of its employees. This policy is increasingly rejected by the medical community and many hospitals are getting rid of such treatments, and it’s in the crosshairs of many states and federal government agencies.
Dan Schulman departed PayPal while it was in a steep decline and he is the poster boy for everything wrong with Corporate America and its wokeness the last several years. We called for his removal from Verizon’s board in 2023, but instead the company made him its top independent director.
Competition from the likes of AT&T and T-Mobile is intensifying, so the installation of Schulman shows poor judgment, tone-deafness and bad timing on the part of Verizon’s board. What a disgrace.
