Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation to help UCLA target antisemitism
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By Jonathan Riggs | October 6, 2023
According to a report this year by the Anti-Defamation League, 2022 saw the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., a troubling increase reflected around the world and closely linked to increased political polarization and hate crimes.
To help battle this upswell, Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation gave UCLA a $600,000 gift to establish the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism.
“It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “I am grateful to Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation for this important investment. The mission of the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism epitomizes the highest ideals of our institution and will help our society find ways to rise above animus in all its forms.”
The Research Hub is a partnership between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate, led by David N. Myers, distinguished professor and Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History, and the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, led by Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Viterbi Family Endowed Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies. It will marshal the resources of both the initiative and the Leve Center to unite interdisciplinary faculty and student research from across campus.
“Professors Myers and Stein are visionary scholars who can build community and translate the Research Hub’s important goals into real-world action,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of humanities. “The combined forces of their leadership and these three important entities will allow us to better understand how hate takes rise, is spread and becomes lethal — so that it can be more successfully diminished and prevented.”
Tony Pritzker
Over the next three years, the gift will fund postdoctoral scholars, fellows, graduate students and undergraduates as well as faculty research and public outreach and programming.
“In countless ways, the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism will prove how crucial UCLA’s rigorous scholarship and robust outreach are in battling bigotry and rancor,” said Stein, the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Leve Center. “Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation has identified an extraordinary need to create positive change in our world, and the Research Hub is answering it.”
“Antisemitism is a key site in the larger ecosystem of hate that afflicts our society. The task of a great public research university such as ours is to take up the big questions that plague our world,” said Myers. “Antisemitism has been called the longest hate. It is our job to try to understand and mitigate it as part of our larger aim of combatting hate. Through the work of the Research Hub, we hope to turn that goal into reality.”
Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation has a long history of promoting public safety in Los Angeles and funding innovative multidisciplinary research at UCLA; this new Research Hub builds on these two priorities at a critical time for the community. The Foundation has given more than $100 million to the campus. In addition to serving as co-chair of the Centennial Campaign for UCLA, which raised $5.49 billion, Tony Pritzker has participated on numerous boards across campus and is currently a member of UCLA’s Second Century Council, a board of advisors to Chancellor Block.
