Part of a centuries-old tradition of recognizing eminent scholars, chairs provide a permanent endowment or perpetual grant to support the work of renowned professors and their successors thereafter.
During the ceremony, Associate Dean Scott Altman said the Shapells devoted their lives to community, education and memory.
“Nathan Shapell’s devotion to community — through government and private organizations — has been constant, ranging from his work on Prop 13, to his active support for affordable housing, to his leadership on drug abuse,” Altman said.
Although Stolzenberg’s scholarship ranges widely, Altman said her work “almost always includes a focus on community — the challenges to maintaining community in the face of liberal education or assimilative pressure or the collision of one community with another.”
Nathan Shapell is the co-founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Shapell Industries, a privately owned company that has developed real estate throughout California since 1955. A native of Poland, he is a Holocaust survivor and a three-time presidential appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Lilly Shapell was a multi-linguist who held an honorary doctoral degree from Bar-Ilan University. She passed away in 1994.
Shapell and his daughter and son-in-law, Vera and Paul Guerin — parents of Michael Guerin '05 — attended the event, along with Stolzenberg and her family, and members of the USC Law community.