JEWISH SENTINEL

24 JEWISH WORLD • DECEMBER 20-26, 2024 2018 called “the crown jewel of the CUNY system.” Hunter, which was founded in 1872 and had fallen on hard times during the late 1960s, is rated today among the top colleges in New York City and around the world. In its just-issued 2025 list, the British publication Times Higher Education (THE) ranks it among the top 20 percent of the nearly 2,100 colleges worldwide. Raab played an important role in that turnaround. As president, she expanded philanthropic support for the college, raising over $531 mil- lion. She used that money to increase student scholarships, upgrade Hunt- er’s faculty, and establish centers for Jewish and Asian Studies. She also opened a public policy institute at Roosevelt House, the home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the first years oI their Par- riage. Raab strengthened Hunter’s standing in the arts by ensuring that the school’s theatre department was the only one in New York City with its own building. She also oversaw dazzling advances in the medical field with the construction oI a state-of-the-art research facility in Manhattan’s Weill Cornell Belfer Center and the development of part- nerships with leading medical and scientific research institutions, in- cluding a $50 million National In- stitutes of Health clinical transla- tional research grant with Weill Cornell Medical College. Raab called her achievements at Hunter a “labor of love.” One of her proudest achieve- ments, Raab said, was obtaining a multi-million-dollar grant from real estate magnate Larry Silverstein and his wife Klara that enabled Raab to create a Chair in Jewish Studies named after its donors. She filled that chair with the highly re- garded Jewish scholar Leah Garrett, who also serves as Hunter’s Direc- tor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Antisemitism on New York City campuses and beyond was a grow- ing problem long before the events of October 7, 2023. Raab said it was important “for a school like Hunter, located in the heart of the New York Jewish community, to have tenured faculty speak out against antisemitism wherever it appears, including on our own campus. Leah has done a superb job on all this and much more.” Because antisemitism on college campuses nationwide “is a serious problem,” Raab felt the need to en- courage greater interaction be- tween Jewish students and those of other faith groups. To that end, she oversaw the construction of a gleaming new Multifaith Center, to which she moved the campus Hil- lel from the isolated building it had previously occupied. “It is wonder- ful that now the Hillel is right next door to the Muslim Student Associ- ation, and you have Muslim stu- dents praying alongside the Hillel. This is a real case of community building. A nother gift to Hunter that was especially meaningful to Raab came from Ron Spurga, vice presi- dent of the ABN Amro Bank and a member of the Lithuanian Alliance of America, whose generosity made it possible for Hunter to create a small outdoor public space on the Hunter campus in honor of his late wife Marie, a Hunter alum- nus who died last year from cancer. “Ron decided to make this loving gift in his wife’s memory,” Raab said, “because she always said that she would not have had the profes- sional opportunities that came her way if she had not attended Hunter.” She added, “Ron has be- come a big supporter of Hunter both in memory of his wife and because of his own life experience—a poor boy who rose because he was able to get a full scholarship to Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. i According to Raab, “Ron Spurga’s ex- perience was very much like my own. It was and still is about giving people without means the oppor- tunity to access a high-quality education and then watching them live out their dreams. Ron Spurga truly gets it.” Now, at age 68, when most people are ready to retire, Raab has taken on her third transformation- al professional position as president of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. It, too, reflects the -ewish values she brings to her work. “Research in the stem cell field is adYancing at an incredi- ble rate,” she said, explaining why she took on this new role, “and we are looking forward to curing dis- eases that we did not think possible 10 years ago. So that combination of having an impact and making the world a better place to live in was so exciting to me.” NYSCF was co-founded in 2005 by two women—lawyer and man- agement consultant Susan Solomon and former journalist Mary Eliza- beth Bunzel. Both had sons with type 1 diabetes, and they believed that stem cells held the most prom- ise Ior finding new treatPents Ior this and other diseases. The following year, a Japanese researcher, Shinya Yamanaka, revo- lutionized stem cell research by identifying a small number of genes that could reprogram mature skin cells into nearly any cell type in the body. In 2007, he added to this dis- covery by demonstrating that it was also possible to do so from blood cells. In 2012 those discoveries earned him the Nobel Prize in Phys- iology or Medicine. Spurred forward by such rapid developments in the Stem Cell field, 1<6&) is PoYing to coP- mercialize the products that are be- ing discovered. Said Raab, “We're turning an institution that was fund- ing science and changing it into one where we do much of the research in-house.” “We can be nimble in ways aca- demia and pharma cannot,” she said. “Academia has so many levels of approval, whereas we do not have structures that slow us down. If a pharmaceutical company can- not find >a coPPercial rationale@ for certain drugs, it will take them off the shelves. “But since the bot- tom line does not drive NYSCF, we can do riskier research that may lead to scientific Ereakthroughs Therefore, we are perfect partners between the two. When we succeed in showing that stem cells can cure macular degeneration,” another NYSCF research target, “we want pharma to bring that to market.” Asked whether her vision of in- stitutional transformation could lead to a bright future for an ex- tremely polarized America, Raab said, “I am the original glass-half- full person, so yes, I remain opti- mistic about America. We have ac- complished so much as a society by working hard and advocating for what we believe will work for the good of all. If we can keep that fo- cus, I truly believe the future is lim- itless.” Walter Ruby is an award-winning veteran journalist who has written for this newspaper as well as ‘The New York Times,' 'The Wall Street Journal,’ Los Angeles Times,’ and ‘The Jerusalem Post,' 1ennifer 9aab second from right, front ro^ , *ommissioner of the 5e^ @ork *ity 3andmark 7reser]ation *ommis- sion during the s, ^ith members of her staɈ. Raab continued from page 17 Raab sees a bright future for America be- cause we have accomplished so much as a society by working for what we believe in.