A $200 Million Gift Could Turn Columbia Into a Force in Study of the Brain, Mind

A $200 million gift that will allow Columbia University to build a neuroscience center on its yet-to-be-constructed Manhattanville campus is raising the bar on academic philanthropy.The gift, from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, is the largest the school has ever received and ranks in the top 15 for a university anywhere in the nation.The president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, said he expects the center, which will be designed by architect Renzo Piano, to be the world’s foremost facility “for the study of the brain and mind.” He called it a “truly transformational development” for the school.Planning for the center is in the preliminary stages, but the gift puts the school in position to land more top-notch scientists and to make breakthroughs in the study of degenerative neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.With life expectancy rising and America’s baby boomers graying, many universities and medical centers have devoted more money to the field, and competition with schools such as Harvard University is on the rise.“Biology of the mind will be as important scientifically to the 21st century as the biology of the gene was for the 20th century,” a Nobel laureate who was on hand for yesterday’s announcement, Dr. Eric Kandel, said. He is one of three tapped to head the planned facility.The gift adds to the $40 million Greene, who attended Columbia College and law school in the 1920s, has already given to the school.A real estate lawyer who died in 1999 at age 93, Greene’s name is already on buildings all over the limestone facades at the Morningside Heights campus.He also gave money to a number of other institutions, including Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School.“There are very few projects on this scale that you can give that amount of money to. They don’t come along every five minutes,” his widow, Dawn Greene, said during a phone interview.Ms. Greene said her husband “loved Columbia. He always felt that Columbia gave him the atmosphere and tools that made him successful.”Columbia officials said that in addition to studying neurodegenerative diseases, scientists at the new center will study with those in the arts, law, and a wide range of other fields at the school to better understand how the mind functions.The director of New York University’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising, Naomi Levine, said private gift giving was nothing new in academia, but that the amounts are hitting new levels.“Fifty years ago, $1 million was a lot,” Ms. Levine said. “Then it got to be $25 million, and then $50 and $100. Even when I first came to NYU 25 years ago, a $1 million gift, or $2 or $3 million was an enormous gift.”With state and federal cutbacks to academics projects and research, she said the need for private donations is only growing.“Some people, and I underline some, are earning a great deal of money,” she said. “The papers and magazines reported that there are 257 billionaires in this country, so I’m delighted to see gifts of this size and I hope it will set a standard.”Mayor Bloomberg, who was on hand for yesterday’s announcement in the rotunda of Columbia’s Low Library, said the new center would be a major boon for the city.Mr. Bloomberg, who is also a major contributor to health and medical institutions, said that along with a new child study center at NYU and the planned bioscience “East River Science Park” to be built on the grounds of Bellevue Hospital, the Columbia neuroscience center is allowing the city to further cement its place as a leader in the field.He said Greene, who he knew from the board of Lincoln Center, would have approved of the gift, particularly in a “day and age when the freedoms that academic institutions have to expand man’s knowledge both in the science and political discourse are under attack.”Columbia officials said the $200 million is the largest gift a university has ever received for the creation of a single facility.According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, it is tied for the 11th largest university donation across the board. Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have received larger cash donations, and NYU was given a $150 million donation from the Jurodin Fund, a foundation created by Julius Silver, who graduated from the school in 1922.The Columbia project has not yet received the necessary land use approvals, but with Mr. Bloomberg on board it will have a good shot of getting the green light.Ms. Greene said she hoped the center would help promote science as a pre-eminent field and attract young people who are increasingly choosing other careers. Then she joked that the planners of the project focusing on the mind and memory should “hurry up because I can’t remember names.”

A $200 Million Gift Could Turn Columbia Into a Force in Study of the Brain, Mind

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