University of Oregon Board Chair Steve Holwerda (left) recognizes philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer (right) for his family's $25 million donation to the university on May 13, 2025.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
University of Oregon alumnus and philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer, along with the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation, has donated $25 million to UO, in the largest donation the university has ever received for its College of Arts and Sciences. University officials say the gift will help significantly advance how the college approaches global education and research.
UO has received larger sums in the past, such as Phil and Penny Knight’s gift of $500 million in 2017 establishing a new science campus. But the Schnitzer donation announced Tuesday is the biggest private donation dedicated to UO’s largest college, where about two-thirds of all students are enrolled. As part of the gift announcement, UO officials said the global studies school within the arts and sciences college is being renamed the “Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages.”
In a statement announcing the donation, leaders at UO acknowledged that supporting global research and education comes at a particularly difficult time for international aid organizations and the communities that rely on them. Portland-based Mercy Corps said last month that federal cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development was forcing them to cut more than two-thirds of its federally-funded programs.
Friendly Hall became home to the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon on May 13, 2025, thanks to a $25 million donation from Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation.
Elliot Ma / University of Oregon
“Caught between the forces of globalization and still-resilient communal loyalties, every society is facing contradictory pulls on its social fabric,” Aneesh Aneesh, professor of global studies said in UO’s press release. “Whether graduates of the Schnitzer School are employed in foreign service, NGOs, think tanks, global businesses or the public sector, they will help light up the path forward in a divided world.”
At a press conference in Portland Tuesday, Schnitzer said he hopes this new effort will train the next generation of leaders to take on both local and global challenges.
“If there’s anything that’ll help make a difference down the road, it’s having informed young people that realize they need to wake up every day and have the passion to make the world a better place,” Schnitzer said.
The money is intended to recruit and retain top professors in global studies and languages, and to bring in a new tenure-track scholar. The investment comes as European countries reach out to researchers facing funding cuts at American universities.
The university plans for money from the donation to offer undergraduates a new major centered on international relations with a focus on an “in-depth, interdisciplinary approach to global issues.” The Schnitzer gift is intended to help graduate students as well, through support for their research and teaching, “while expanding the doctoral student population” at the school.
The quad at the University of Oregon's Portland Campus in the Concordia neighborhood on May 13, 2025.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
As part of an effort to raise the profile of UO’s globally focused Schnitzer School, UO is funding a new Center for Global Futures, which plans to embark on several initiatives, including a lecture series, annual conferences, a scholars-in-residence program and an annual competition for the Harold Schnitzer Scholar Prize to honor outstanding global research.
UO President Karl Scholz said the donation will help the university function as an institution that brings people from diverse backgrounds together, broadens perspectives and helps students navigate global complexities.
“We’re never about teaching our students what to think, but how to think,” Scholz said. “And the Schnitzer School is a wonderful locus for that kind of work to happen.”
The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation and Jordan Schnitzer are contributors to OPB.
