George Soros is known as one of the most famous philanthropists in the world. He has given almost $32 billion of his personal fortune to fund Open Society Foundations, an umbrella group that supports individuals and organizations across the world engaged in the fight for freedom of expression, accountable governments, and just and equal societies. Soros also is the founder, and primary funder, of Central European University in Budapest, which has positioned itself as a leading regional center for the social sciences.
Under Soros’s supervision, many individuals and different organizations across the world received support from the Open Society Foundation. We all are able to live in safer, more just societies. Schools and university students are able to fund scholarships to continue their studies, regardless of their place of birth or their identity.
This funding is especially targeted to aid those who are facing discrimination just because of who or what they are, or where they’re from. It’s not hard to find the motivation, either—as a child born in Hungary in 1930, his Jewish family was able to survive the 1944-1945 Nazi occupation only by securing false identity papers. They lived in fear, concealing their backgrounds and helping others do the same.
In 1947, Soros left Communist-controlled Hungary for London, where he worked his way through the London School of Economics. After emigrating to the United States in 1956, he earned his fortune in the world of finance, culminating in the 1970 establishment of his own hedge fund, Soros Fund Management.
As his success in business afforded him ever greater opportunities to help those in need, Soros began his philanthropic efforts in 1979, when he endowed scholarships for black South Africans living under apartheid. In short order, he was fostering the open exchange of ideas in Communist Hungary by funding academic visits to the West and supporting independent cultural groups. Central European University was created shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a space to foster critical thinking in a society that had lost such ability under its Communist leadership.
Soros’s childhood experiences as a Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary certainly has colored his philanthropic decisions. Because of his wealth and the breadth of his philanthropy, he has given generously to many causes and groups that have put him at odds with the supporters of President Donald J. Trump.
That personal animosity, and the desire to set any individual up as a convenient bogeyman, led to the astroturf creation of a petition that sought to ask President Trump to classify Soros as a terrorist. The allegations are unfounded, and derives from the fact that many organizations Soros supports are opposed to the views and policy goals espoused by ‘conservative’ figures in current U.S. politics.