Re:Pearsons, Who Pledged $100M to UChicago, Want Their Money...
by root_crontab on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @07:40AM
(#16528421)
It seems like there was a mismatch in expectations that goes to the heart of how universities and philanthropy work.
The university thought it was getting a donation, along with some vanity conditions, comparable to naming a building or a chair, which it could fudge while spending the money on whatever it wanted.
The foundation thought it was paying the university to carry out something very specific on its behalf.
Re:Pearsons, Who Pledged $100M to UChicago, Want Their Money...
by frandroid on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @11:16AM
(#16529738)
> The university thought it was getting a donation, along with some vanity conditions, comparable to naming a building or a chair, which it could fudge while spending the money on whatever it wanted.
I think it's clear that the conditions were more than vanity, and were actually qualitative.
> Apart from ensuring that the Institute had a world-class in-house faculty, the contract also mandated that the University host an annual “Pearson Global Forum” (PGF) that would convene leading conflict scholars and policymakers from around the world.
> The University, according to the suit, was obligated to hold the first PGF by October 31, 2018, but said that it could not host the event by then as “it had not planned or done the necessary preparatory work.” The Pearsons alleged that the University informed them that it would attempt to meet this obligation by that date by instead involving the Institute in the 2018 Irish Catholic Bishops’ World Meeting of Families Congress, an event which, according to its website, “brings together families from across the world to celebrate, pray and reflect upon the central importance of marriage and the family as the cornerstone of our lives, of society and of the Church.”