Barbra Streisand funds new UCLA institute
3 years
(Photos courtesy of UCLA and Barbra Streisand.)
On Oct 18, UCLA announced that legendary singer and multi-award winner Barbra Streisand will fund a new institute at the university to address four key societal challenges via four research centers: The Center for Truth in the Public Sphere, Center for the Impact of Climate Change, Center for the Dynamics of Intimacy and Power Between Women and Men, and the Center for the Impact of Art on the Culture, housed in UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences.
“It is my great pleasure to be able to fund an institute at UCLA, one of the world’s premier universities,” Streisand said in a statement. “This will be a place where future scholars can discuss, engage and argue about the most important issues of the day; where innovators will speak truth to power, help save our planet and make glass ceilings for women an anachronism; and in the process give us a chance to have a brighter, more promising future.”
A musical icon, Streisand was the first U.S. woman to direct, produce, write and star in a major motion picture (“Yentl” 1983), the first woman composer to receive an Academy Award (“A Star is Born” 1976), the first woman to receive a Golden Globes Award for Best Director (“Yentl”) and the only recording artist who has achieved No. 1 albums in six consecutive decades. She is also a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists by the U.S. government, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Streisand also has been a supporter of civil rights, gender equality and upholding democracy. An environmental activist, she funded some of the earliest climate change research at the Environmental Defense Fund beginning in 1989. She also has supported cardiovascular research and education at Cedars-Sinai since 2007, and in 2012, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai was renamed in her honor. She also established the Streisand Chair in Cardiology at UCLA in 1984. In 2014, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program was established at UCLA.
