Ex-Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, who owns the LA Clippers basketball team, is donating $60 million to Harvard’s computer science department. Even though Harvard has a stellar reputation, its computer science program isn’t top 10.
“I believe in Harvard,” Ballmer told the Crimson. “I went to school here and I love the place, and I believe in the power of technology to make a difference.”
Ballmer said he wants Harvard’s department to be as strong as those of MIT, University of California-Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University.
He has not specified the exact amount of the donation, but he told the Crimson he was “all in” with his commitment to endow 12 professorships, which generally cost $5 million each. The Crimson calculated this should bring the total gift to around $60 million, arithmetic Ballmer called “pretty good.”
“This is going to change everything,” Harvard’s Dean of Computer Sciences, David Parkes, told the New York Times. He explained to the Crimson that computer science is more important than ever, because “we’re at a point now where the field is affecting every other field.”
Hiring 12 outstanding professors won’t be easy. “The competition for these people is absolutely brutal,” former computer science professor Oren Etzioni told the New York Times.
