Lester Crown Receives Honorary Doctorate from TAU
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Chicago philanthropist is honored for "The Crown Effect"

Lester Crown and Zvi Galil

In a rare off-campus ceremony at Chicago's Standard Club on October 7, 2008, Tel Aviv University conferred its highest honor — Doctor Philosophiae Honoris Causa — on Chicago businessman Lester Crown.

Crown is Chairman of Henry Crown and Company, a family-owned and operated company which includes diversified manufacturing operations and real estate. He was awarded the distinguished degree in recognition of his remarkable contributions as a business and civic leader, and the breadth of his support for higher education, science, health, cultural and Jewish initiatives in the United States, Israel, and around the world.

The university, founded in 1956, very rarely confers the award at a site other than its lush Tel Aviv campus.  Another off-campus conferral is planned for 2009 for a head of state.

The Crown Effect

A central focus of the conferral ceremony and luncheon was The Crown Doctoral Fellowship Program, an initiative established by the Crown family in 2004 that has already awarded 200 graduate scholarships.  American Friends of Tel Aviv University characterized that program and his many other philanthropic endeavours as "The Crown Effect":

His charitable giving illuminates a well-developed world view, embracing science and imagination, scholarship and pragmatism, compassion and community. His is a sophisticated, complex and strategic vision — but the profound effects of his philanthropy can be described in simple terms.

They are ripples in a pond.

The Crown Effect first transforms individual lives, then ripples far beyond.  It advances academia.  Adds stature to Israeli scholarship.  Burnishes Tel Aviv's leadership as an economic capital.  Reinforces the Middle East's only bulwark of democracy. Strengthens Israel's ability to compete on the world stage.  Nurtures the ties that unite the Jewish people.

Ripples, indeed.

Joining an Illustrious Group

Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich, Lester Crown, AFTAU chairman William Cohen

The list of Tel Aviv University's previous honorary doctorate recipients is a virtual global Who's Who, from the second half of the twentieth century to date.

Statesmen include David Ben Gurion, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger and Yitzhak Rabin.  Recipients in the arts include Leonard Bernstein, Marc Chagall, Eugene Ionesco, Henry Moore, Santiago Calatrava and Franco Zeffirelli.  In the world of business and finance, recipients include Armand Hammer, Laurence Tisch, Sheldon Adelson, Martin Whitman and Michael Steinhardt.  Scientists and scholars include Bernard Lewis, Eric Lander, Edward Teller, and Elie Wiesel.

Business and Civic Leadership

Renée and Lester Crown

Lester Crown is widely known and admired for his civic leadership.  He is a director of the Children’s Memorial Medical Center and its Foundation, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chairman of The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Chairman of the Civic Committee of The Commercial Club of Chicago, Vice Chairman of the Aspen Institute, and director of the Jerusalem Foundation.  He is a Life Trustee of Northwestern University, member of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Theological Society, Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also chairs the Advance Gifts Campaign at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

He is also a director of Yankee Global Enterprises LLC and an indirect owner of the Chicago Professional Sports Limited Partnership (the Chicago Bulls basketball team).

Crown holds a bachelor of science in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.  He and his wife, Renée, have seven children and 25 grandchildren.

See the video below, "The Crown Effect," shown before the ceremony: