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Barbra Streisand will establish an eponymous institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, to address some of her key social concerns, the university announced yesterday.
The Barbra Streisand Institute, which will be housed in UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences, will include four research centers: the Center for Truth in the Public Sphere, the Center for the Impact of Climate Change, the Center for the Dynamics of Intimacy & Power Between Men & Women, and the Center for the Impact of Art on the Culture.
“It is my great pleasure to be able to fund an institute at UCLA, one of the world’s premier universities,” the acclaimed entertainer said. “This will be a place where future scholars can discuss, engage and argue about the most important issues of the day; where innovators will speak truth to power, help save our planet, and make glass ceilings for women an anachronism; and in the process give us a chance to have a brighter, more promising future.”
Streisand asked to keep the amount of the gift private, according to Melissa Abraham, director of media relations at UCLA. The Center for Truth in the Public Sphere will be established first. Until the full amount of the gift is received and the institute is formally established, the work will be housed in the UCLA Center for the Study of Women.
“Much of the work [has] already been done,” Abraham wrote in an email. “But the Streisand Institute at UCLA will allow the work to be focused around core topics, and to pursue additional research in those areas.”
Streisand, a noted philanthropist, has supported UCLA in the past, establishing the Streisand Chair in Cardiology in 1984 and the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program in 2014.
Her latest gift was motivated by concern for “the future and what it holds for our children, our planet and our society,” she said in the press release. “The Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA will be an exploration into vital issues that affect us all … and the fact that my father, Emanuel Streisand, was an educator makes this Institute even more meaningful to me.”
