$5 million grant from Annenberg honors George Shultz

George P. Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution, has been honored by the Annenberg Foundation with a $5 million grant to Stanford.

The institution will receive $4 million of the grant to endow the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Fund and establish the Annenberg Distinguished Fellowship. The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) will receive $1 million to establish the George P. Shultz Dissertation Support Fund that will back empirical research by graduate students working on dissertations related to problems of economic policy.

"Stanford is delighted that the Annenberg Foundation has chosen to honor [Shultz] by supporting those key aspects of the university that mean so much to him," said President John Hennessy.

Shultz, the Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Economics, Emeritus, at the Graduate School of Business, served as U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989. Hoover Director John Raisian said the Annenberg Distinguished Fellow, a visiting scholar, will focus on national security and foreign policy.

SIEPR Director John Shoven said Shultz came up with the idea for a dissertation fund to support graduate students’ use of primary sources to help them gain deeper insights into their topics of study. "It will enable them to become familiar with their research topics firsthand rather than rely on secondhand sources," Shoven said. "It might allow some students to follow in the footsteps of George Shultz."

Shultz will participate in the selection of the institution’s Distinguished Annenberg Fellows. The directors of SIEPR and Hoover, and the chair of the Department of Economics, will choose recipients of the dissertation support.All Stanford dissertation-level students in economics will be eligible to apply.