$20-Million Pledged to Israeli University

A Michigan businessman who earlier this year stopped payment on a $30-million pledge to one university in Israel has promised $20-million to another institution there.

William Davidson, owner of the Detroit Pistons basketball team and chief executive officer of Guardian Industries, in Auburn Hills, Mich., said this month that his company would give $20-million to the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot.

Guardian is a privately held manufacturer of glass products for the automobile and construction industries. The gift will establish a center at Weizmann to strengthen science teaching at secondary schools.

Mr. Davidson had promised $30-million to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a scientific university in Haifa, in December 1996. He was to pay $17-million through 1999 and then distribute the remainder over 27 years.

But in July he put on the brakes.

Mr. Davidson froze payment after giving $7-million to the Technion. He had made the gift to establish a business school that would teach management skills suited to technology-based, export-oriented companies. An Israeli newspaper reported in July that Mr. Davidson was not happy with the Technion’s efforts to recruit faculty members.

A spokesman at Guardian said it was wrong to assume that the freeze on the Technion gift was connected to the decision to support Weizmann.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” said Peter Walters, a vice-president at the company. Mr. Walters noted the difference in the purposes of the two gifts, and said that while Mr. Davidson’s reasons for stopping payment to the Technion are private, he might yet fulfill his original pledge.

Melvyn H. Bloom, executive vice-president at the American Technion Society, the university’s fund-raising arm in New York, said that the Technion was still involved in discussions with Guardian Industries and that he did not view Weizmann as a competitor for funds.

Mr. Davidson declined to comment on either donation.