Columbia University’s medical school announced on Thursday that one of its graduates was donating $400 million, the largest gift in the medical school’s history.
The gift, from P. Roy and Diana Vagelos, would expand biomedical research at a school that already bears their name, after they donated $250 million in 2017.
It comes at a critical time for the university, which spent much of the last school year convulsed by protests over the Israel-Hamas war. The university’s handling of those protests led some major donors to pause their contributions to the school.
Last week, the university’s president, Nemat Shafik, stepped down from her job, and was replaced in the interim by Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the chief executive of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which includes the medical school.
In an interview on Thursday, Dr. Armstrong said that the Vagelos gift should not be viewed in the context of the protests and controversy that defined university life over the past year.
“This gift has been fundamentally focused on driving science and driving our impact, in our mission,” Dr. Armstrong said. “That is their singular focus,” she said of the Vageloses.
She said that P. Roy Vagelos, a medical doctor who graduated from Columbia in 1954, was committed to science and the promise it holds for human health. Dr. Armstrong noted that Dr. Vagelos had a major role in the development of statin drugs that decreased cholesterol at Merck, where he served as chief executive. Under his leadership the company also helped expand the availability of ivermectin by giving it away for free to some countries, dramatically reducing river blindness in parts of Africa and Central America, Dr. Armstrong noted.
The Vageloses have been important donors to the university. Their 2017 gift to the medical school underwrote financial aid for students with the greatest financial need.
In the midst of student protests during the last school year, Columbia became the epicenter of a national debate over free speech and free expression on college campuses. Many in the university community felt that the university’s response was heavy-handed after it called in the police to clear encampments and an occupied building. Still others felt that the university had done too little to protect Jewish students, some of whom were subjected to antisemitic vitriol and intimidation.
Some donors fell into the second category. Robert K. Kraft, the New England Patriots owner and a Columbia graduate, suggested that he would stop giving money to the school, saying he was “deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country.”
“I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” Mr. Kraft said in a statement in April. In the past he has donated $5 million to Columbia’s athletics program and more than $11 million to the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life on campus.
The Russell Berrie Foundation, which had donated some $86 million to Columbia over the years, also suspended gifts.
“It’s a painful decision for us to have come to this point where we have to tell them, ‘There’s a disconnect between your values and ours,’” Angelica Berrie, the president of the foundation’s board, said in an interview earlier this year, explaining that “our Jewish values infuse our philanthropy.”
The Vageloses have given more than $900 million to Columbia’s medical school, which its officials said made them “the most generous donors in Columbia University’s history.”
On Thursday, Dr. Armstrong called the Vageloses “stalwarts of Columbia” and said the gift would help the school continue in its mission.
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