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White’s Professorship in Moral Philosophy at Oxford endowed and renamed

Brian Leiter

Oxford's announcement is here.  Some friends on FB were puzzled that the endowment wasn't used to create a new Chair.  I suspect the explanation is that the White's Professorship was not endowed at all, but supported by regular university funds, and that this endowment will take some of the strain off of Oxford's budget, which is very strained post-Brexit.   2.8 million euros in endowment will produce spendable income of about 80-100,000 euros per year, which would likely cover half or more of salary for the position.  Comments are open for readers who may know more.

ADDENDUM:  As pointed out in the comments, the endowment is in GBP, not euros, so the income from the endowment is likely to support more like half to two-thirds of the salary.

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6 responses to “White’s Professorship in Moral Philosophy at Oxford endowed and renamed”

  1. JDF

    That's basically right, though the donation is in pounds sterling, not Euros.

    Reply
  2. Chris Timpson

    This surmise is approximately right: the White's chair was *originally* endowed – 400 years ago – but by some time in the 19th Century the original endowment was no longer able to support the post (I haven't delved deep enough into the history to learn why). John Broome (White's Professor emeritus) tells me that Corpus Christi College ended up supporting the post in its entirety from then until some time in the early 1920s – very unusually, since statutory professorships are primarily University posts, not college ones – at which point the University took it back on (from general funds, indeed). The re-endowment by the Sekyra Foundation is extremely welcome to secure the long term future of the chair.

    Reply
  3. David Wallace

    The more general fundraising point is that money is fungible, so from the recipient's point of view it is nearly always better to receive money to support something that you were committed to doing anyway than to do something that you weren't otherwise intending to do. The right question isn't 'why did Oxford want to use this money to support an existing chair' but 'how did Oxford convince the donor to support an existing chair rather than to endow a new one?', since donors normally have the opposite viewpoint: they want to give money to make some visible thing happen that would not have happened without their donation.

    (This is both one of the most important problems – at least in the UK – that universities have in incentivizing their fundraising teams, and one of the most important questions to ask when you see a university's headline fundraising numbers. If I give Oxford a hundred million pounds specifically earmarked to endow a Centre for David Studies, it looks good on the resume of whoever closed the deal and good in the overall fundraising numbers. But unless the university had already committed to endow a Centre for David Studies out of its own resources if external funding could not be found, it's neutral as regards Oxford's overall financial situation. And it's only useful to Oxford's academic mission insofar as a Centre for David Studies was something it wanted to acquire and just couldn't previously afford.)

    Reply
  4. PhilMath_Novice

    @David Wallace: I think it is plausible that donors might be very happy to attach their name to prestigious positions instead of creating new chairs. It's a quick and easy way to make more impact (?). I think if I had enough money and wanted make a mark in philanthropy, I would rather fund an existing chair than create a new one. It sounds better to me to get instantly associated with Green, Austin, Hart, Williams, etc. than endow a chair which (might) get associated with famous people long after I am dead. PhilMath_Novice and Wykeham Professor of Logic sounds much better than a new PhilMath_Novice Professor and I get Ayer, Dummett, and Williamson for free!

    Incidentally, the Wykeham Professor of Physics was recently endowed by Tencent and instead of creating a new chair or renaming the chair, the Wykeham Professor of Physics will concurrently also be the Tencent Chair of Theoretical Physics.

    Reply
  5. David Wallace

    @PhilMath_novice: I don’t know how plausible it is a priori, but I was involved in a fair amount of fundraising at Oxford and it doesn’t match my experience. Potential donors mostly wanted things to happen that wouldn’t have happened without them.

    Reply
  6. PhilMath_Novice

    Ah I see. Point taken.

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