Photo courtesy Notre Dame University
A Pakistani-American couple has made a $15 million gift to the University of Notre Dame, one of the top Catholic universities in Indiana, to create an institute focused on the study of religion.
The money given by medical doctors Rafat and Zoreen Ansari, and their adult children will help establish the Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement With Religion, according to the Notre Dame University and a news story in The New York Times.
To be part of the university’s Keough School of Global Affairs, the Institute will study how religious teachings, traditions, history, practice and thought inform the rapidly shifting patterns of global migration, conflict and peace-building, political culture and human development.
Dr. Rafat Ansari is an oncologist. Dr. Zoreen Ansari is a family medicine physician.
“We came as immigrants, and this country has given us so much,” Zoreen Ansari said Saturday. “We want to give something back to America, but also to humanity. We want to promote the idea of equality.”
“The need for people of faith to focus on what unites us rather than on what divides us has never been more urgent,” the Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, said .
“This extraordinary gift from an esteemed local Muslim family, longtime friends of Notre Dame, will allow us to bring together scholars of the first order to foster dialogue and deepen understanding. We are immensely grateful to the Ansaris for making this aspiration a reality.”
“The various roles of religions in alleviating suffering, accompanying the migrant and the refugee, serving the poor and reducing violent conflict are far less understood and publicized than the havoc created by a tiny minority of deluded religious extremists on every continent,” said R. Scott Appleby, Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School.
“The Ansari Institute intends to change the conversation about religion – not by denying the troubling aspects of religious expression, but by directing attention to the vast good done by religions, and the even greater good they might accomplish in partnership with universities and other public and private institutions.”
The Ansari Institute will appoint faculty members who study the roles religions play in the public sphere and in crucial sectors such as health care, education and the economy, according to the university.
The Ansaris are among the immigrants who achieved the American Dream aftere moving to the South Bend, Indiana, in 1980, where they raised their three children — Sarah, Adam and Sonya.
While the Ansaris were educated in Pakistan, their daughter Sarah graduated from Notre Dame Law School.
In 2008, the couple had made a significant gift to the Regional Autism Center in South Bend to help the center expand services to teenagers and young adults. One of their children, Sonya, has autism. The facility was renamed the Sonya Ansari Center for Autism in her honour.The Ansaris in 2011 were inducted into the South Bend Community Hall of Fame for their contributions to the community.
About three decades ago, Rafat Ansari helped form the Hoosier Oncology Group, a statewide network of doctors that provides clinical trial access to patients closer to their homes, guided by the Indiana University’s Simon Cancer Center, according to Tribune archives. The couple also has contributed to Reins for Life, and hosted numerous fundraisers for Logan, the March of Dimes and other organizations.
