Philanthropy
In addition to his business ventures, Belfer is well known for his philanthropic endeavors. He is a major donor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he founded the Robert and Renée Belfer Court for early Greek and prehistoric art in 1996.[12] For decades, he has given to John F. Kennedy School of Government, which named Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs after him in 1997.[13] He also donated to Weizmann Institute of Science as well as the Israel Museum.[14][15]
His philanthropic activities have focused on medical institutions. He donated to Yeshiva University, whose tallest building, Belfer Hall, was named after his family, and served as the chair of the board of overseers of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where the Belfer family had established the Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies.[16][17] He also served on the board of Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, to which he donated $250 million over the years.[18] The school's $100 million Belfer Research Building, dedicated in 2014, is named after him.[6][19] Belfer sat on the board of directors of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and donated $35 million to found the Robert A. and Renée E. Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science.[20]
He also was the founding donor for the Neurodegeneration Consortium, a multi-institutional collaboration to find treatments for Alzheimer's disease, which is based out of MD Anderson Cancer Center.[21] Belfer has also supported the Aging Brain Initiative, an interdisciplinary research effort within the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.[22]
Belfer also endowed a professorship at Columbia University, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations, which is held by the political scientist Jack Snyder.[23] He has supported the ADL Center for Technology and Society and its launch of the Belfer Fellows program, which brings awareness to online hate speech and harassment and works to promote equitable online spaces.[24]
