Sumner Redstone Donates to Harvard for Public Service

Courtesy of CNBC

Media Mogul Sumner Redstone donated $1 million to Harvard to establish fellowships in the area of public service.  Motivated by John F. Kennedy’s call to service work Redstone hopes to foster a desire toward public service for Harvard Students.  Redstone is both a Harvard and Harvard Law graduate.  He also gave half a million to his high school alma mater Boston Latin which recently celebrated it’s 375th anniversary and is the oldest public school in the country.

The Harvard Crimson noted that this is the biggest gift that Redstone has given the law school.  Redstone’s wealth took a hit with the dive in the stock market back in 2008 but thankfully has rebounded a bit.  It is important for someone of his wealth and connection to Boston to give back, particularly in these more challenging economic times.  His endorsement of public service ties in nicely with Bill Gates recent visit to  MIT to inspire students to work on the world’s big problems.  They have the Bill Gates video available on the MIT website.  Strengthening the talent pool in the public service sector is imperative not only to solve the world’s social problems but also it’s economic problems as well.

Besides being a philanthropist Redstone is well known in the business world and his views on content seem much more obvious now than when he started talking about “content is king” in the world of media.  As an owner of what was a chain of movie theaters called National Amusements he foresaw that distribution channels would multiply because of the internet and mobile and shifted his strategy toward acquiring Viacom and CBS so that he could produce and supply content.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts as Sumner Murray Rothstein in 1923, at the age of 86 he hopes to be around for a long time.  We would all benefit from more of his vision and philanthropic work so we hope is obsession with antioxidants works…

The following is Sumner Redstone in a ad for CNBC: