$3 Million Gift from Fred Pardee Strengthens School's Global Impact

September 17, 2018

Our graduate school’s global human progress initiative bears his name — as does the school itself. Yet, Frederick S. Pardee is still giving, still helping the school institutionalize a focus on global issues.

The Pardee RAND Graduate School recently received a $3 million pledge from Mr. Pardee to expand the Pardee Initiative for Global Human Progress and integrate its efforts with the school’s redesign.

The Initiative launched in 2013 as part of a previous $3.6 million gift from Mr. Pardee intended to draw on the talent and innovation of Ph.D. candidates and RAND research staff while advancing RAND's work in international development. This new donation will expand the Initiative and allow the School — through its redesigned curriculum and content ecology, online learning platform, community embedding, and technological development — to have a global reach and focus.

Since its founding, the Pardee Initiative has supported innovative work on tough international policy issues such as affordable housing, youth employment, food insecurity, mental health, the impact of trade, resource conservation, and sexual violence. By creating critical partnerships and links with outside experts, scholars and practitioners, Initiative scholars have conducted research and analyzed data to develop insights and further policy solutions.

These efforts will continue and will also be integrated into the School's "global DNA," according to Prof. Krishna Kumar.

Kumar, who has been selected to lead this endeavor, said, “I am tremendously excited to lead the globalization efforts of the reimagined Pardee RAND Graduate School, made possible by this generous gift from Fred Pardee.

"The school has had a rich tradition of fostering international work through courses, dissertation-writing grants, faculty support, and OJT participation by fellows in international projects," Kumar continued. "This will be a great opportunity to build on this experience to strengthen the school’s global DNA as the redesign takes shape. I am especially looking forward to exploit the synergies opened up by my appointment as the director of international research, further integrating the school with the rest of RAND in all aspects international."

Mr. Pardee is a longtime supporter of the school and RAND, and he currently serves as a member of the school’s Board of Governors. He worked as an economic analyst at RAND from 1957 to 1971. After leaving RAND, he founded a privately held real estate investment firm that owns and operates apartment complexes in and around Los Angeles. Even with his success in business, his interest in policy never left him.