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Stanford University will receive a $1.1 billion donation to fund a new school dedicated to climate change and sustainability studies, the university announced Wednesday. Other donors have contributed a combined $590 million, making the school’s starting endowment $1.69 billion.
The gift, from billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann, is the largest ever given to a university for the establishment of a new school. It is the second largest donation ever made to an institution of higher education, after former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 2018.
The school, which is to be named the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, is Stanford’s first new school in 70 years and will be home to a range of interdisciplinary institutes related to climate change.
Doerr, who made his money investing in Silicon Valley tech giants like Google and Amazon, has been an outspoken advocate for sustainable technology and infrastructure and began investing in zero-emission technologies in 2006. Last year he published a book titled Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
“These gifts will help Stanford bring its full effort to bear on solving the most complex problems in climate and sustainability, and on training the next generation of students who are eager and driven to address these challenges,” Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in a press release.
Arun Majumdar, a professor of mechanical engineering, will be the school’s inaugural dean.
Stanford has rejected calls from students to divest its endowment from fossil fuel companies, a step taken by peers like Harvard University and Dartmouth College in recent years.
