Magazine Owner Gives $10M For Aid

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of US News and World Report, announced Thursday that he will donate $10 million to Harvard University for a graduate fellowship program designed to attract students who have studied law, business or medicine to the public sector.

“If they are inspired by the program at Harvard, at some point they will feel the pull to serve their own communities—whether on the state, local, or federal level,” Zuckerman wrote in a press release.

Each year, Harvard will select 25 Zuckerman fellows from a national pool of students who are pursuing or have earned professional degree in law, business or medicine but are interested in a degree at Harvard’s School of Education, School of Public Health or Kennedy School of Government.

“The Zuckerman Fellowship is a testament to the mission we subscribe to here at the Kennedy School of Government, to encourage the best and brightest to commit themselves to public service and help to change the world,” said Tim Sultan, president of the Kennedy School’s Student Government.

Zuckerman fellows will engage not only in their own academic areas of interest, but will also participate in dinners and discussion sessions with public service professionals.

As part of the program, the fellows will travel to explore public service work firsthand.

The press release said that University President Lawrence H. Summers and Zuckerman believe that the fellowship will help encourage students to explore careers in public service rather than entering fields that offer higher financial incentives.

“We have an opportunity to help the next generation of Americans to ask themselves what they can do for their country and for their world,” Summers said in the press release. “Mort Zuckerman’s gift will make a difference not just to students at Harvard but to the shape of our society for generations to come. I am very grateful for his generosity and his dedication to this important mission.”

Zuckerman has strong Harvard ties—he graduated from Harvard Law School and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for almost a decade. After a career in real estate development, Zuckerman purchased Atlantic magazine in 1980 and then went on to acquire publications such as US News & World Report and the New York Daily News.