Stanford, Harvard get $5.2 million for Buddhist studies
- Friday, 07 October 2011 17:19
- Steven E.F. Brown
Stanford University and Harvard University have gotten $5.2 million in grants from Hong Kong’s Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation to “promote the understanding of Buddhist philosophy in the West.”
The $2.5 million gift to Stanford, along with matching money from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will pay for an endowed chair in Buddhist Studies. It will be the first permanent faculty post dedicated to Buddhism at Stanford, and the professor who occupies it will help to increase work on Buddhist research and teaching within the Department of Religious Studies.
The endowed chair is part of Stanford’s Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Center for Buddhist Studies, which was set up in 2008 and paid for with a $5 million gift from the foundation. This new faculty position will focus particularly on Chinese Buddhism.
Carl Bielefeldt is co-director of Stanford’s Buddhist Studies center.
Harvard University will spend its $2.7 million grant on a Buddhist Ministry Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. This will allow students seeking a Master of Divinity degree to study Buddhism.
The Foundation, started in Hong Kong in 2005, uses philanthropy to support teaching about Chinese arts and culture, as well as Buddhism, around the world.
Source: San Francisco Bussiness Times
