Tel Aviv University announced this morning that it had received a donation of $125 million from Jonathan (Jon) Gray, president and chief operating officer of private equity firm Blackstone, and his wife Mindy. The university’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences will be named after the couple. Blackstone has over $1 trillion under management.
Until a year ago, the faculty was named after the Sackler family, whose reputation was damaged by its part in the opioids scandal in the US.
Tel Aviv University said in its announcement, "The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences is already the largest in Israel and a world leader, with the highest demand for medical studies in Israel. The new donation will enable it to bolster considerably its academic excellence and to bring in the best researchers in biomed (beyond the 160 researchers already active in that field in the university). The funds from the donation will also help in upgrading the medical faculty building and in setting up new research laboratories at the highest world standard."
More medical students
The donation will also enable the university to expand the number of medical students in the faculty to 400 annually, from 300 today. This will make it double the average size of medical schools in Israel.
This is in line with efforts at Israeli academic institutions in general to increase the number of medical students in the country to 2,000 annually. They include the formation of medical faculties at the University of Haifa, Reichman University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Tel Aviv University said that part of the donation would be allocated to scholarships and support for students. "The faculty will also work to narrow social gaps and to increase substantially student numbers from various sections of the population, such as Arabs, haredim, people of Ethiopian extraction, new immigrants, residents of the periphery, and so on. Among other things, the donation will make it possible to construct a new dormitory building for students of the faculty, with 600 beds. Preference will be given to students from poorer backgrounds and minorities."
The current donation comes on top of several large donations received by Israeli academic institutions recently that have to some extent offset the negative effects of the war. In 2024, Bar-Ilan University received a donation of NIS 1 billion from an unnamed donor, and the Weizmann Institute received a NIS 400 million donation from the Miriam and Aaron Gutwirth Fund, the philanthropic arm of the Allied group, to set up a medical school.
Jon Gray (55) is an American-Jewish billionaire who manages Blackstone and is also chairperson of Hilton Worldwide. He joined Blackstone in 1992, at first specializing in real estate. He was appointed president of the firm in 2018, and led a trend of focusing on more innovative businesses in fields such as online trading, life sciences, new energy sources, and artificial intelligence. The firm was the first investment firm to reach $1 trillion under management.
Gray’s philanthropic activity began in 2014, at first in the field of diagnosis and treatment of women with the BRCA gene mutation that is common among Ashkenazi Jewish women and raises the risk of breast cancer and other gynecological cancers. Mindy Gray’s older sister, Faith Basser, died of ovarian cancer at the age of 44, and the couple founded the Basser Center for the research, treatment, and prevention of BRCA-related cancers in her name.
The Gray Foundation also supports education and health programs for young people in New York.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 7, 2025.
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