Stanford Getting $12 Million For Jewish Doctoral program

(JTA) — The Jim Joseph Foundation will give Stanford University $12 million to renew its Jewish education studies department.

The funding for the California university’s School of Education will create a doctoral concentration in education and Jewish studies, and establish and endow a Jim Joseph professorship in education and Jewish studies.

The gift is the largest in the history of Stanford’s School of Education.

The school and the foundation say the grant will allow Stanford to join New York University as one of only two research universities in the United States offering a doctoral program in Jewish education.

Stanford will admit two students per year for the first three years of the program. One student will be added per year afterward to reach a total of seven.

“Through this generous gift, Jim Joseph Foundation is helping to pioneer a new paradigm for thinking about the intersection of religion and education,” Sam Wineburg, the Margaret Jacks professor of education and history at Stanford, said in a news release from the foundation.

Wineburg said the impact of the foundation’s gift will be felt broadly.

“More children across the globe are educated in religious institutions than secular ones,” he said. “However, we don’t yet know, and have not yet begun to properly study, what ramifications this may have for future generations.”

School of Education faculty at Stanford will collaborate with scholars at the school’s Taube Center of Jewish Studies to create the curriculum for the new concentration.

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