Netflix CEO announces biggest individual contribution to historically black colleges ever

The CEO of Netflix has just announced a huge donation to historically black colleges.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, on Wednesday said they're donating $120 million to Spelman College, Morehouse College, and the United Negro College Fund, The Wall Street Journal reports. That's the "largest ever contribution by an individual in support of scholarships at historically black colleges and universities," an announcement said.

This donation is the latest to be announced amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, and Hastings earlier this week said Netflix would commit $5 million to "nonprofits dedicated to creating direct opportunities for black creators, black youth and black-owned businesses."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Hastings and Quillin encouraged others to support historically black colleges and universities, which "are disadvantaged when it comes to giving" since "generally, white capital flows to predominantly white institutions, perpetuating capital isolation." Hastings also told The New York Times that Floyd's killing was "the straw that broke the camel's back, I think, for the size of the donation," and he told the Journal that he and Quillin realized "that our part of this, to have America be the country we all want it to be, was to focus on education."

Morehouse President David A. Thomas told the Journal "this is a watershed moment," which will "send a signal that historically black colleges should be valued in the same way that we value our most successful undergraduate colleges in this country."