Fundraising Effort - as Large as Any Undertaken by a US Law School - Will Provide Money for Public Service Careers and Faculty Expansion
For more information on the campaign or to make a donation, please visit: http://www.law.nyu.edu/wherewestand/
Richard Revesz, dean of NYU’s prestigious School of Law, today officially announced that the School was undertaking a $400 million capital campaign, a fundraising effort as large as any in the history of American legal education. The funds will be used to increase the size of the faculty by continuing to recruit and support the leading legal scholars in the nation and the world, to offer financial assistance to outstanding students from underprivileged economic backgrounds, to sustain and expand programs to support graduates choosing careers in public service, and to support the school’s existing cutting-edge legal research centers.
The announcement will be made at a private gala launch event this evening at 7:00 pm at the New York Public Library. Five major gifts of $10 million or more will be announced this evening. The campaign - which will run through 2009 - has been in a “silent phase” since September 2002; it has already raised over $165 million dollars.
The Law School’s previous campaign, which raised $185 million between 1991 and 1998, was at the time the largest in the history of American legal education.
Dean Revesz said, “In a remarkably short span of time, NYU’s School of Law has moved into the small handful of schools at the very top tier of legal education. Our School has achieved this by seeking to lead, by blazing distinctive paths. Our faculty has produced extraordinary legal scholarship and influenced the key public policy debates concerning law and legal institutions. We have offered an unequalled education in U.S. law in conjunction with an unmatched exposure to international legal systems; we have provided particular support and encouragement for public service. The Law School’s great success has greatly influenced how the very top peer institutions conceive legal education.
“This capital campaign will consolidate our remarkable advancements while providing resources not just for future expansion of our existing programs, but for sustaining our source of strength: a commitment to being at the forefront in legal education.” At the event this evening, the School of Law will announce five major campaign gifts of at least $10 million each. The donors are:
- Jay Furman, (1971)
- Rita (1959) and Gustave (LL.M., 1957) Hauser
- An anonymous donor
- Anthony (1977) and Beatrice Welters
- Leonard Wilf (LL.M., 1977)
- Raymond Kelly, New York City Police Commissioner
- Philanthropists Rita and Gustave Hauser
- Martin Lipton, chair of NYU’s Board of Trustees
- Tony Welters, chair of the campaign and CEO of Americhoice
- Philanthropists Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz
- Kathryn Chenault, wife of American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault
- NYU Law Professor Noah Feldman, adviser on the Iraqi constitution, and author of “Divided by God”, recently excerpted in the New York Times
- Attorney Barry Slotnick, and
- Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on Law and Security and co-editor of The Torture Papers (Cambridge, 2005)
The NYU School of Law emerged from a plan devised by Benjamin Butler, Attorney General under President Andrew Jackson, to create a law faculty at NYU and an unprecedented three-year course of study for prospective lawyers, which later became a mainstay of legal education. The Law School was one of the first in the country to open its doors to women and minorities, to provide support for public service legal careers, and to invite lawyers from developing countries to participate in advanced legal training. NYU School of Law is renowned, for, among other things, the excellence of its faculty’s scholarship, the Hauser Global Law School Program, the Root-Tilden-Kern Scholarship Program, as well as its innovative law centers and clinics.