David, ’76, and Laureine Greenbaum Endow Visiting Professorship for Israeli Scholar

David and Laureine Greenbaum

The University of Chicago Law School is delighted to announce that David Greenbaum, ’76, and his wife Laureine have made a $1 million gift to endow the David and Laureine Greenbaum Distinguished Visiting Professorship. Mr. Greenbaum, President of the New York Office of Vornado Realty Trust, and Mrs. Greenbaum, an attorney, have endowed the visiting professorship for a scholar from Israel to visit the Law School each year.

“We are thrilled to have David Greenbaum as an alumnus and friend,” said Michael H. Schill, Dean of the Law School and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law. “But it is David and Laureine’s commitment to the state of Israel that makes this generous gift a perfect match with the ideals they share with the Law School. Israel has had a long history of serious legal scholarship, particularly, but not exclusively, in the area of law and economics, and we have had extraordinary experiences bringing Israeli scholars into our community both to teach and to interact with our faculty. We look forward to putting David and Laureine’s generosity to work in building and cementing relationships with the very best scholars Israel has to offer.”

The Greenbaum Visiting Professorship will bring one Israeli scholar to the Law School each year for at least one academic quarter. As with all the Law School’s visitors, the Greenbaum Professor will fully participate in the life of the Law School faculty and will teach courses at the Law School. In addition, the Greenbaum Professor will lecture in the College of the University of Chicago and will be available to the University community as a whole for both intellectual and cultural exchange.

“In the Israeli legal academy there are many excellent scholars who would tremendously benefit from the experience of visiting the University of Chicago Law School,” says Ariel Porat, a former Dean of Tel Aviv University Law School, and the Fischel-Neil Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School for the past ten years. “I feel privileged to visit the University of Chicago every year, teach exceptional students, and interact and collaborate with the best law professors in the world. At the same time the Law School will benefit from the interaction with Israeli scholars, who are often interdisciplinarily oriented, and have background rooted in European, American, and original Israeli law.”

David R. Greenbaum is President of the New York office of Vornado Realty Trust. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 1976, he joined Weil Gotshal & Manges as a tax attorney. In 1982 he joined The Mendik Company and became its President. In 1997, The Mendik Company merged into Vornado Realty Trust. David is a member of the Citizens Budget Commission, the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of the Real Estate Board of New York, and the Realty Advisory Board. He also sits on the Board of Directors for the 34th Street Partnership, Grand Central Partnership and Times Square Alliance. David is the 2010 recipient of The Real Estate Board of New York Bernard H. Mendik Lifetime Achievement Award. Laureine Greenbaum is an attorney who practiced commercial and copyright law at CBS Inc. until 1989. In 2001, Laureine Greenbaum co-founded and currently serves as cochair of Project Cicero, a New York City-wide book drive that has donated two million books to under-resourced city public schools since its inception.

David and Laureine are tireless advocates for the state of Israel. They both serve on the National and Greater New York Boards of Jewish National Fund (JNF). Laureine currently serves as President of the Greater New York Board and as vice chair of the board of The JNF Parsons Water Fund, and co-founded and is the former chair of JNF’s Greater NY Women’s Campaign for Israel. David serves as a Presidential Advisor on JNF’s Board of Trustees. In 2011, the JNF honored the Greenbaums with the prestigious Tree of Life award.

“David and Laurine’s generosity, and the generosity of other alumni like them, makes possible the intellectual mission of the University of Chicago Law School: to bring extraordinary people together to discuss path-breaking ideas and change the world,” said Schill. “The Greenbaum Visiting Professors will bring Israeli scholars of the highest caliber into our community to further broaden our perspective and promote long-lasting exchanges of ideas between our countries. I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to these two amazing people and their support both of Israel and the intellectual endeavor here at the University of Chicago.”

The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 with the objective of creating a new kind of law school, professional in its purpose, but with a broader outlook than was then prevalent in the leading American law schools. Located on a residential campus in one of America's great cities, Chicago offers a rigorous and interdisciplinary professional education that blends the study of law with the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences.