A New Home for a Lifetime of Work
$6.1 million gift honors alumnus; supports Libraries' Special Collections/James Madison College
A New Home for a Lifetime of Work
$6.1 million gift honors alumnus; supports Libraries' Special Collections/James Madison College
May 29, 2020Research scientist Keelung Hong, Ph.D., has made a $6.1 million gift to Michigan State University in honor of his spouse, alumnus Stephen O. Murray, a sociologist, anthropologist, and independent scholar who died in 2019.
MSU Libraries will receive $5 million from the gift to renovate space in the Main Library for its Special Collections—the largest cash gift in the Libraries’ history. MSU's James Madison College will receive $1 million—the largest gift in its 52-year history—to support the Stephen O. Murray Scholar in Residence. An additional $100,000 will be used by MSU Libraries for travel fellowships to bring other researchers to MSU Special Collections.
“This is a significant gift that will help MSU build and maintain scholarly resources that are critical to support research related to diversity and inclusion,” said MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., M.D. “We are grateful to Dr. Hong for his trust in us to carry forward this important work.”
In honor of the gift, MSU Libraries is naming its special collections division the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections.
“This gift is a tremendous act of generosity and philanthropy,” said Dean of Libraries Joseph A. Salem. “The etymological root of philanthropy begins with love, and this is Keelung Hong’s demonstration of love for Stephen Murray, for MSU Libraries, and for research, teaching and learning.”
The residency program and travel fellowships will support visiting scholars who will teach and conduct research with access to the Libraries’ Stephen O. Murray Archival Collection and other resources. Special Collections holds over 450,000 printed works, numerous manuscript and archival collections, and an extensive collection of ephemera supporting research in popular culture, radicalism, comic art and gender. These materials can be seen and used in the Special Collections reading room, which will remain on the first floor of the Main Library.
“My donation is intended to ensure that Stephen O. Murray’s research, whether complete and published or incomplete and remaining unpublished at his death, remains accessible to other scholars, and to support additional research into the topics that interested him,” Hong said. “His commitment to libraries really helped me understand that I should continue to support his interests and continue to support libraries for future generations.”
Murray and Hong were together for 38 years. After graduating from James Madison College at MSU, Murray earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Toronto, was a postdoctoral fellow in anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, and worked in public health in California, Ohio and Texas. But his primary work and love was his dedication to scholarship and writing. He wrote and contributed to more than 20 books and published studies in sociolinguistics, the history of social sciences, and extensive historical and cross-cultural studies on homosexuality in multiple cultures.
Hong, who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley was a research scientist at the University of California, San Francisco for 20 years. His work in improving cancer therapy has led to a series of breakthroughs and a number of patents in drug carrier technology for improving drug and gene delivery. After being a consultant to several biotech companies, Hong founded Taiwan Liposome Company in Taiwan and its subsidiary, TLC Biopharmaceuticals in the United States, where he currently serves as chairman and CEO.
LEARN MORE: about supporting the MSU Libraries by contacting Director of Development Seth Martin at marti981@msu.edu or by calling (517) 884-6446; or about supporting James Madison College by contacting Director of Development Rocky Beckett at beckettr@msu.edu or by calling (517) 432-2117.
The MSU Libraries are at the center of academic life at MSU, providing expertise, collections and infrastructure for discovery and creation. The Libraries facilitate connections that support research, teaching and learning in local and global communities.
James Madison College is an undergraduate liberal arts college of public affairs and international relations at Michigan State University. Since its establishment in 1967, the college has graduated numerous Rhodes, Truman, Marshall and Fulbright Scholars, and National Science Foundation Fellows, and regularly represents over 30% of MSU’s Phi Beta Kappa class. James Madison College has a limited enrollment of approximately 1,200 students, and has over 9,000 living alumni worldwide.
