By COLMAN McCARTHY

No other school has joined the peace movement with as much financial footing as the University of San Diego. The university received a $25 million gift from Joan B. Kroc in 1998 for the purpose of creating graduate and undergraduate programs in peace studies, as well as a research center for faculty and a new Gandhi Scholar program for visiting teachers and activists.

Construction of the 90,000-square-foot Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice overlooking San Diego’s Mission Bay has begun. Classes and programs are scheduled for the fall of 2001. The university was founded 51 years ago by the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

Kroc, who has long dispensed funds to people and organizations of conscience that other foundations overlook, said, “We must not only teach peace but make peace.” She has been a supporter of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, several programs for poor and homeless people in Southern California, as well as anti-nuclear war groups. In the 1980s, she was the major donor for an international peace studies program for graduate students at the University of Notre Dame. More than 20 international students, from China to Chile, are selected annually to study -- all expenses paid -- at Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

National Catholic Reporter, September 29, 2000

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