David Rockefeller Pledges $100-Million to Harvard for Study-Abroad Programs

David Rockefeller has pledged $100-million to Harvard University, his alma mater. The pledge is the third gift of that size he has made in recent years.

He announced in 2005 that he planned to give $100-million apiece to the Museum of Modern Art and to Rockefeller University, both in New York.

As with the other pledges, Harvard will receive the money upon Mr. Rockefeller’s death.

Advance Payments

Meanwhile, in addition to this new pledge, Mr. Rockefeller, who is 92, said that beginning this year he will give Harvard an annual payment of $2.5-million until he dies. The amount of the payment is approximately equal to what the university would earn in income from the principal of the pledge, but this way the university can benefit from it now rather than waiting until he dies.

Approximately $70-million of the pledge will support study-abroad programs for undergraduates as well as internships and service and research programs in foreign countries. Some of that money will also provide annual stipends for undergraduates studying abroad who otherwise could not afford to do so.

The study-abroad component of the pledge is of special significance to Mr. Rockefeller, who spent the summer of 1933 in Germany in an effort to learn the language and to meet Harvard’s foreign-language requirements at the time, and saw firsthand the rise of fascism in that country.

“I think that increasingly it’s important for students to spend a significant amount of time abroad, and I just think that it isn’t enough to know just about this country. The best way, from my own experience of learning about other parts of the world, is to go there and meet the people and live with them. And therefore I think this program is going to help, hopefully, many students at Harvard to get the kind of experience that I think is just as vital for them as the education they get at Harvard,” said Mr. Rockefeller.

While the expansion of study-abroad programs is crucial, said Mr. Rockefeller, he also believes that people today need a better understanding and knowledge of the arts, which is why he has earmarked the remaining $30-million for arts programs. Most of the money will be used to build three new centers where undergraduates can study original artworks from the university’s holdings.

As a young man, Mr. Rockefeller entered Harvard with an unusually broad understanding of art. His parents were avid art collectors and his mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was one of the founders of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He took several art-history courses during his first few years at Harvard. But he said it wasn’t until he traveled through Europe at the end of his junior year, during which time he and a friend visited 30 museums that he realized that seeing original artworks up close provided a deeper understanding of the works he had studied.

$35-Billion Endowment

With an endowment that is valued at nearly $35-billion, Harvard is the wealthiest university in the world, and as such is often criticized for courting and landing large donations.

Yet officials there say the institution’s wealth does not negate the need for gifts such as Mr. Rockefeller’s.

“Harvard has many important things to do and many important things that it is especially well equipped to do because of the talent of our students, the ability of our faculty, the important kinds of questions that we are asking about the world around us, and those endeavors require resources. So as we initiate new kinds of engagements and new programs, we find that those aspirations require support,” said Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust.

Mr. Rockefeller, a retired chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and the last living child of John D. Rockefeller Jr., graduated from the university in 1936 and served on its board from 1954 to 1968.

Over the years he has given Harvard gifts totaling $40-million and has given or pledged a total of at least $1-billion to nonprofit institutions over his lifetime. Mr. Rockefeller told The Chronicle in an extended interview (November 23, 2006) that he wants to announce the beneficiaries of his fortune before he dies.