News Update

Stanford receives $1.1 billion gift to create climate school

Stanford University has received the largest donation  in its history – a gift of $1.1 billion for the creation of a new school focused on climate change and sustainability, the New York Times reported.

The gift comes from Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, an investor in Google and Amazon who is worth more than $11 billion. It is the second-largest donation to a university in U.S. history, the Times reported, trailing only Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins in 2018.

“Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science,” Doerr, told the Times. “This is what the young people want to work on with their lives, for all the right reasons.”

The school will be known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. It will be home to traditional academic departments related to topics such as planetary science, energy technology and food-and-water security. It will also feature several interdisciplinary institutes and a center focused on developing practical policy and technology solutions to the climate crisis, the Times reported.