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Billionaire John Doerr Makes Stanford Richer With $1.1 Billion Climate Pledge

The venture capitalist is funding a new climate-focused school at the prestigious university.

The billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr made one of the largest gifts in higher-education history this week with a $1.1 billion commitment to Stanford University for a new school that will focus on the climate crisis. “Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science,” Doerr told The New York Times. “This is what the young people want to work on with their lives, for all the right reasons.” The money will help Stanford pay for dozens of faculty dedicated to climate change, though its first dean, Arun Majumdar, said the school will not engage in political activism. Doerr’s donation is surely being celebrated on campus, but it also attracted some initial skepticism. “I don’t see how giving a billion dollars to a rich university is going to move the needle on this issue in a near-term time frame,” David Callahan, founder of Inside Philanthropy, told the Times. Stanford’s endowment stood at a mammoth $37.8 billion as of last summer.