UCI receives gift for Persian center

Michael Miller

Fariborz Maseeh, a Newport Beach businessman and philanthropist,

pledged $2 million to UC Irvine this week to help the campus

establish a center for Persian studies.

The Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture,

set to open this fall, will be the first center in the UC system

devoted entirely to Persian issues. Maseeh, who founded the

IntelliSense manufacturing firm in 1991 and currently runs the

nonprofit Massiah Foundation, envisioned the new center as an

opportunity to educate students about a little-known culture.

“A center like that is something the nation needs,” Maseeh said.

“As we’re getting more interdependent and more communicative with the

Internet and global travel, I thought we needed to catch up a little

bit on the cultural side. We need centers like this to acclimate us

with those cultures in other parts of the world.”

The Jordan Center, administered by the School of Humanities, will

provide research grants, sponsor lectures and workshops, and

introduce at least three new faculty members to the university. UCI

plans to establish three endowed professorships for the new center,

one of them in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts.

Campus officials expressed gratitude for Maseeh’s gift, which the

university will complement with funds of its own.

“We’re hoping that this will be the most important center of

Persian study in the country,” said Karen Lawrence, dean of the

School of Humanities. “I think it will be an interdisciplinary center

and will allow us to focus on a very important, very influential

culture historically.”

The Jordan Center will be located temporarily in the campus’s

Berkeley Place building, then likely move to a new home within the

next few years. The campus will begin offering Persian studies and

language classes this fall. Next month, UCI will hold a workshop for

Persian scholars from around the country to offer ideas for courses

and programs.

“The history of the Persian people is an extremely impressive

one,” said chancellor Ralph Cicerone. “It’s a history that not enough

people know about, and that’s what Mr. Maseeh wants to make more well

known. He wants us to focus on history, literature and culture, and

not so much on current politics.”

Maseeh, born in Iran, emigrated to the United States in 1977 to

attend Portland State University and later earned a doctorate in

engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He named

the Jordan Center after an American missionary who went to Iran in

1898 and helped to establish Alborz High School in Tehran.

“I went to Alborz High School, which is the biggest and best high

school in Iran, so I was an indirect beneficiary of what Dr. Jordan

did some 80 years back,” Maseeh said. “I felt a deep sense of

gratitude that he came over and created a learning facility for which

I was a beneficiary.”

In addition to his work with the Massiah Foundation, which

provides grants to universities, Maseeh serves as a UCI Foundation

trustee and sits on the campus’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering

advisory board. He also chairs the Children’s Hospital of Orange

County Foundation and serves on other community boards.

“One of the reasons I’ve done this is reading about Dr. Jordan and

how he was pro-education,” Maseeh said. “He believed the best

investment is in human capital, and I hope this center continues some

of his spirit of innovation.”

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at [email protected].