4,448 gifts

Thousands of gifts—sent from 49 states and 18 countries—were made to fund BU’s Center for Antiracist Research following its launch in the summer of 2020. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, led by Reshma Kewalramani (CAS’98, MED’98), made the inaugural gift, $1.5 million through its Vertex Foundation, and several other organizations, including the TJX Companies, Inc., followed suit with significant gifts and commitments. Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey gave $10 million through his Start Small Foundation, and his Twitter cofounder, Biz Stone, along with his wife, Livia Stone, gave $1 million.

$3M

Ryan Roth Gallo (LAW’99), vice chair of BU’s Board of Trustees, and her husband, Ernest J. Gallo, endowed the Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professorship. The inaugural professor is School of Law Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a renowned scholar in critical race theory and an expert in racial and gender inequality, as well as antidiscrimination law.

$8.25M

A bequest by Laurence A. Bloom (DGE’66, CAS’68), who died in 2019, puts him among the ranks of BU’s most generous donors and enabled the University to create a new endowed professorship in economics (Professor Kevin Lang was recently appointed to this chair), a need-based scholarship for undergraduates, and a fellowship fund for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences. The gift was also used to fund a portion of the Wetherill-Bloom Career Development Professorship in the Humanities, recently awarded to Kate Lindsey, a CAS assistant professor of linguistics.

And then some!

Supported by a generous gift, the Shibulal Family Career Development Professorships, named for BU Trustee S. D. Shibulal (MET’88) and Gaurav Manchanda (Questrom’12), support research by rising faculty within the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS). Krzysztof Onak, and Kira Goldner, both assistant professors of computing & data sciences, are the first recipients. Additionally, MassMutual donated $1 million to create, in part, the MassMutual Professor of the Practice Fund at CDS, to bring industry expertise to classroom teaching.