Stanford University President John Hennessy launched a wide-ranging International Initiative on Thursday and announced corresponding gifts of nearly $100 million to provide resources and expertise in the quest to help solve some of the most daunting global issues of the century.

Stanford alumni Bradford Freeman and Ronald Spogli, business partners and friends for more than 25 years, have committed a lead gift of $50 million to the new initiative.

"The world's problems-international peace and security, global health, poverty-present themselves in the form of challenges that defy traditional rubrics," Hennessy said. "By unifying and strengthening our efforts in the area of international affairs, we affirm that Stanford has a special role to play in addressing these issues and providing real-world solutions."

Hennessy praised the leadership of Spogli and Freeman for jump-starting the initiative with their gift.

"Brad and Ron are true friends of the university," Hennessy said. "Their philanthropy stands for much more, however, than loyalty to their alma mater. It recognizes the magnitude of what is at stake and acknowledges the responsibility Stanford must assume to advance knowledge in the area of international affairs."

Freeman ('64) and Spogli ('70) are founding partners of the Los Angeles-based investment firm Freeman Spogli & Co. Freeman is a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees; Spogli is a member of the board of visitors of the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS).

"We are very pleased to support the International Initiative and enable the Stanford Institute for International Studies to enhance its focus on key issues and challenges of our times," said Freeman and Spogli.

The lead gift will create up to 10 interdisciplinary professorships and endow the directorship of the Stanford Institute for International Studies. Together with an allocation from the Office of the President, it also will create a $3 million intellectual venture-capital fund to support innovative, interdisciplinary research and teaching in international studies at Stanford. In addition, the gift will support the work of the institute's centers and programs and stimulate collaborations between and among the institute, Stanford's seven schools and the Hoover Institution.

Key Stanford donors have contributed an additional $44 million to meet important objectives of the International Initiative:

Craig ('73) and Susan ('84) McCaw will provide critically important need-based scholarship support for international undergraduate students, which President Hennessy recently articulated as a high university priority.

An anonymous donor has pledged a gift to the Graduate School of Business (GSB) to support its Center for Global Business and the Economy and the institute. The gift will strengthen campus-wide collaborations for the initiative, particularly involving the GSB.

Susan Ford Dorsey has made a gift that will permit a substantial enhancement of the International Policy Studies master's program, to be operated jointly by SIIS and the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Longtime supporter Walter Shorenstein will endow the institute's Asia Pacific Research Center, to be named the Walter Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center.

"Thanks to this most generous gift from Brad Freeman and Ron Spogli as well as the contributions from several other farsighted friends of Stanford, the university stands ready to embark on a fundamentally new and very dynamic course in international research and education," said Coit D. Blacker, director of SIIS. "These gifts lay the groundwork for the transformation of international studies at Stanford. We are very excited about what Brad's and Ron's generosity will make possible at Stanford - and very grateful to them for this important vote of confidence in what we are seeking to accomplish."

Stanford's International Initiative will focus on three broad cross-cutting themes: pursuing peace and security in an insecure world; reforming and improving governance at all levels of society; and advancing human health and well being. The International Initiative follows recent multidisciplinary university initiatives in the biosciences and the environment.