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By THALIA BEATY of the Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Stanford University will launch a new school focusing on climate change thanks to a $1.1 billion gift from billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann, the university announced Tuesday.
This gift, which is the largest single donation to an American institution of higher education, will see the opening of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in the fall. The school will combine several Stanford departments and institutes. It will hire dozens more faculty members over a decade and also establish an accelerator to grant grants for new projects.
“We have designed a school for the future combining knowledge generation and impact, building on the strong foundation established through Stanford’s history of scholarship,” said Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, in a statement.
Stanford engaged in a long-running process to create a vision for a school that focuses on climate change. Mara Vandlik, a university spokesperson, said that the Doerrs became acquainted with Stanford after they learned about the new school.
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John and Ann Doerr stated in a statement that “This is the decisive decade” and they must act with speed and scale.
John Doerr is a prominent investor in Silicon Valley. He is the chairman and chief executive of Kleiner Perkins Venture Capital. Since 1980, he has successfully advocated for early investment in technology companies like Google and Amazon. He has authored a book published last year “Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now,” that outlines technology and policy priorities for attaining a livable future. Ann Doerr is the board chairman of Khan Academy, an online education provider. She was also an advisory trustee for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Isabelle Leighton was the interim executive director of Donors of Color Network. She praised the donation and said that it was exciting to see large-scale, new donations related climate change. But she also urged universities to include communities currently affected in their efforts to find solutions. Her network asked major foundations that give to climate change causes for 30% of their donations to be pledged to organizations headed by people of color.
“While it’s really great to invest in research and analysis, you have to make sure that you’re looking at the full picture of what we need to do to actually make the change and the shift,” Leighton said. “The people who are most directly impacted by what’s happening from climate change need to be a very strong voice, if not the leading voice, in what the solution needs to look like.”
She gave the example of climate justice alliance, a network that supports renewable energy projects in frontline communities, and she said it was an example.
Stanford also received $590million from other donors, in addition to the donation by the Doerrs. The university stated that some of the funds will be used to construct two new buildings.
Vandlik stated that the school would accept gifts of fossil fuel companies or other industries.
“Stanford is committed to conducting research that will accelerate the transition to a decarbonized economy worldwide,” she said. “The transition is going to require partnership with industries in order to implement new technologies at the enormous scale required.”
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