Investor John Paulson announced a $250 million gift to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Oct. 17 at the school’s board of governors gala. It is the largest donation in the university’s history, according to The Times of Israel.
With earlier gifts, Paulson’s total support for the university reaches $296 million, according to a university press release. His earlier gifts total about $46 million, including $27 million in 2023 and $19 million earlier this year, per eJewishPhilanthropy.
The university’s Mount Scopus campus will be renamed “The Alina and John Paulson Campus, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem.” The school itself keeps its name.
The money will go toward a new Faculty of Engineering that works with computer science, medicine, and the life sciences. It will also expand medical and biomedical programs, fund research on trauma and post-trauma recovery, and create a think tank connecting faculty expertise with public needs, per The Times of Israel. The trauma research is tied to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the war that followed.
“I made the choice to shift my philanthropy toward Jewish causes in general, and toward Israel in particular,” Paulson told Calcalist. He added that the gift was meant to show support and international solidarity with Israel, eJewishPhilanthropy reported.
He also made a case for value. Paulson said the “return on a dollar at the Hebrew University is ten times higher than at Harvard,” per Calcalist. His sister, Theodora Bar-El, studied at the university after moving to Israel in 1968, and a university building is named for her family.
The gift is the third-largest individual gift to an Israeli university, behind a $400 million bequest to Ben-Gurion University and a $260 million anonymous gift to Bar-Ilan University, according to eJewishPhilanthropy. Paulson’s largest gift overall was $400 million to Harvard’s engineering school in 2015.
Paulson founded the New York investment firm Paulson & Co. in 1994. He earned much of his fortune in 2007 by betting against the U.S. subprime mortgage market before it crashed, per The Times of Israel. Forbes estimates his fortune at $11.2 billion.
He is not the only investor known for big gifts. In 2006, Warren Buffett pledged $36.1 billion in stock to the Gates Foundation, and by 2026 he had given more than $47 billion.
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