University of Oregon alumnus and philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer, along with the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, has donated $25 million to UO, in the largest donation the university has ever received for its College of Arts and Sciences. University officials say the gift will help significantly advance how the college approaches global education and research.
UO has received larger sums in the past, such as Phil and Penny Knight’s gift of $500 million in 2017 establishing a new science campus. But the Schnitzer donation announced Tuesday is the biggest private donation dedicated to UO’s largest college, where about two-thirds of all students are enrolled. As part of the gift announcement, UO officials said the global studies school within the arts and sciences college is being renamed the “Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages.”
In a statement announcing the donation, leaders at UO acknowledged that supporting global research and education comes at a particularly difficult time for international aid organizations and the communities that rely on them. Portland-based Mercy Corps said last month that federal cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development was forcing them to cut more than two-thirds of its federally-funded programs.
“Caught between the forces of globalization and still-resilient communal loyalties, every society is facing contradictory pulls on its social fabric,” Aneesh Aneesh, professor of global studies said in UO’s press release. “Whether graduates of the Schnitzer School are employed in foreign service, NGOs, think tanks, global businesses or the public sector, they will help light up the path forward in a divided world.”
The money is intended to recruit and retain top professors in global studies and languages, and to bring in a new tenure-track scholar. The investment comes as European countries reach out to researchers facing funding cuts at American universities.
The university plans for money from the donation to offer undergraduates a new major centered on international relations with a focus on an “in-depth, interdisciplinary approach to global issues.” The Schnitzer gift is intended to help graduate students as well, through support for their research and teaching, “while expanding the doctoral student population” at the school.
As part of an effort to raise the profile of UO’s globally focused Schnitzer School, UO is funding a new Center for Global Futures, which plans to embark on several initiatives, including a lecture series, annual conferences, a scholars-in-residence program and an annual competition for the Harold Schnitzer Scholar Prize to honor outstanding global research.
The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and Jordan Schnitzer are contributors to OPB.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington