NAMES IN THE NEWS : Professorship to Honor Wiesel
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NEW LONDON, Conn. — A philanthropist has given $1.4 million to Connecticut College to create a professorship honoring Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
The endowment creating the Elie Wiesel Chair in Judaic Studies is the largest gift in the private college’s 79-year history, school officials said today.
The money was donated by Jo Ann Hess Myers, a 1967 graduate of the school, who runs a private day school in Birmingham, Ala. She also directs the Fig Tree Foundation, a private philanthropy.
Wiesel, a survivor of a Nazi death camp, has crusaded for human rights throughout the world. He has written more than 30 books and is the founder of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
The college has formed a search committee to fill the post with a Judaic scholar, who is to develop a program including philosophy, government, history, sociology and religion.
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