Paul Brooke CC’67 Endows Program Chair of Literature Humanities
Motivated in part by fond memories of reading Shakespeare and other great authors as an undergraduate, Paul Brooke ’67, GSAS’72’s latest gift to alma mater ensures a bright future for the College’s signature and most historic literature course.
After many years as a loyal John Jay Associates-level donor to the Columbia College Fund, Brooke and his wife, Kathleen McCarragher, have made a $1 million gift to the Core to Commencement campaign that will endow the Paul Brooke Program Chair for Literature Humanities. Spending from the endowment will be used at the discretion of the dean of the College to provide a stipend to the chair, a tenured faculty member, during his or her three-year term. The endowment will also empower the chair to pursue initiatives that will enhance the Lit Hum experience for students.
“I had great teachers and gained perspective on everything from American literature to Shakespearean sonnets...”
Brooke’s desire to see that Lit Hum attracts the best possible faculty leadership is related to the high regard in which he holds many of his former literature professors, which included Steven Marcus ’48, GSAS’61, the George Delacorte Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, and the late Carl Hovde ’50, who was dean of the College 1968–72.
“I had great teachers and gained perspective on everything from American literature to Shakespearean sonnets,” says Brooke, who has a master’s in history. “I remember taking a course that consisted of a full semester devoted to the play Hamlet. That was a great course.”
While Brooke chose a career that had little to do with his academic interests — he is the founder and managing director of venBio, a pharmaceutical investment company and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of life science analysis, investing and management — he credits his Columbia education with giving him the tools to be critical. “It prepared me to think, to reflect, to play with ideas and to be willing to learn,” he says.
A father of four, Brooke hopes that by investing in the Core he will help put other students in a position to excel, not only in their own careers and pursuits but also as members of society.
“What the Core does is build an educated perspective,” he says. “It helps you prepare to be a citizen. What this world needs are people who have a sense of citizenship. I think there’s a direct link between art, philosophy, history, literature — everything the Core is focused on — and people coming out of the University better prepared to be part of the world.”