Dalai Lama donates to Florida International University

ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) Florida International University has announced a $5 million endowment campaign, seeded with an “unprecedented” $100,000 gift from the Dalai Lama, to save its department of religious studies. It is the first time the exiled Tibetan leader has given such a gift to a Western university, said Nathan Katz, a professor of religious […]

ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) Florida International University has announced a $5 million endowment campaign, seeded with an “unprecedented” $100,000 gift from the Dalai Lama, to save its department of religious studies.

It is the first time the exiled Tibetan leader has given such a gift to a Western university, said Nathan Katz, a professor of religious studies who studied with the Dalai Lama as a graduate student in 1973 and has maintained contact with him since then. The Tibetan Buddhist leader also will speak at the university next year.

“In our deeply interconnected world, understanding and appreciation of diversity of religions is critical in fostering a culture of genuine tolerance and peaceful coexistence,” a secretary to the Dalai Lama wrote to Modesto Maidique, university president. “If the department were to close down, it will not be easy to rebuild it.”


The university is seeking donations online, among other methods.

“The state and local governments cannot or will not fund education at adequate levels. So if we want to keep our schools, if we want to keep our teachers teaching … we have to do something.”

The 15-year-old department of religious studies includes 13 full-time faculty and educates some 6,000 students a year. Closing the department would have saved $600,000 a year. If the university can raise $5 million, the state will match that amount.The endowment should generate $400,000 a year, and university leaders promise to make up the difference, Katz said.

The Dalai Lama has visited Florida International University twice before. In 1999 he was awarded an honorary doctorate, and he returned in 2004 as a speaker.

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