What is True Philanthropy: Epilogue, eminence or endowment (#521)
- Rick LeCouteur
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
If you were to gather the former professors of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine - those now emeriti and those no longer living – and ask them about the renaming of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine to the Joan & Sanford I. Weill School of Veterinary Medicine:
You would not hear a single opinion.
But you would hear a remarkably consistent set of values.
These were people who built something slowly. Often, without glamor. Often without adequate funding. Almost always without expectation of public recognition.
Most of them arrived at UC Davis when the school was still defining itself, intellectually, clinically, and ethically.
They taught when facilities were modest, when research funding was uncertain, and when clinical services were driven more by necessity than prestige.
They stayed because they believed in the idea of a public veterinary school serving animals, agriculture, science, and society.
That context matters.
How They Might First React
Many would begin with generosity of spirit.
They would recognize the scale of the Weill donation. They would understand the need for modern hospitals and laboratories. They would know, perhaps better than anyone, how hard it has always been to fund veterinary education properly.
They would likely say something like:
“This will help students,” or “This will help animals,” or “This will allow the school to do things we could only imagine.”
And they would mean it.
But after that initial acknowledgment, a pause would follow.
The Unease Beneath the Gratitude
What would likely trouble them is not the gift, but the renaming.
Because for many of those professors, the school’s name already meant something profound.
The name represented:
decades of collective effort,
intellectual independence,
a culture built around teaching and service, and
a shared identity that belonged to no single person.
They would remember colleagues who:
built clinical services from scratch,
established research programs with little support,
trained generations of veterinarians who went on to serve quietly around the world, and never had a veterinary school named after them, and never expected it.
To them, eminence was earned through work, not wealth.
And so, a question would surface - gently, but firmly:
Why did the school need a new name at all?
Why Not One of Our Own?
Many would wonder why, if the institution felt compelled to rename itself, it did not choose to honor someone whose life had been inseparable from UC Davis veterinary medicine:
A founding figure,
A transformative educator,
A clinician-scientist whose work defined the school, or
Someone whose legacy was intellectual rather than financial.
They would not ask this out of vanity.
They would ask it out of belonging.
Because to them, the school was not a platform for recognition. It was a community built by people who had given their working lives to it.
To see that collective legacy superseded by a donor name, however generous, might feel like a quiet displacement of history.
What They Would Likely Say Aloud and What They Would Not
Most would not protest publicly. They were not agitators. They were builders. They understood institutional politics.
What they would likely say aloud would be measured:
“Times have changed,” or “This is the way universities are funded now,” or “At least the money will do some good.”
But what they might say privately to each other, or to former students, would be more reflective:
“I never thought the school itself would be named for a donor,” or “We used to think the institution mattered more than any individual,” or “I wonder what message this sends to the next generation.”
And perhaps most tellingly:
“I hope they remember who built this place before the money arrived.”
The Generational Divide
It is also likely that many emeriti would see this as part of a broader shift they had already been uneasy about:
Increasing corporatization,
Branding of education,
Market language replacing academic language, and
Leadership increasingly drawn from managerial rather than scholarly traditions.
To them, the renaming would not feel like an isolated decision, but like confirmation of a direction already underway.
Not necessarily wrong. But different.
And different enough to provoke quiet sadness.
What Would Matter Most to Them
If there is one thing most former professors would care about above all else, it would not be the name on the building.
It would be whether the school still:
Taught students to think independently,
Protected academic freedom,
Honored the principles of faculty governance,
Served animals without regard to profitability,
Valued ethics as much as innovation, and
Remembered its own history.
They would judge the decision not by ceremony, but by consequences.
And they would likely leave behind a question for those now in leadership:
Will the school still belong to its faculty, its students, and the profession,
or will it slowly come to belong to those who can afford to name it?
That is not a question born of nostalgia.
It is a question born of stewardship.
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