Funded by $20 million from the Bedari Foundation, the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute will be a hub for research that will document the positive outcomes that result from acts of kindness
The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute is a unique opportunity for cutting edge scientific research on how to create a more humane society, according to UCLA officials.
Dr. Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences at UCLA said that kindness is related to significant issues of the day, such as poverty, homelessness and immigration. At the core is empathy, he added, noting that interesting research is emerging around presence or absence of empathy for others.
“We want to harness our talent across a range of different disciplines and drive research that we feel has the potential to transform individuals and societies,” said Hunt.
The Bedari Foundation is a private family foundation established by philanthropists Jennifer and Matthew C. Harris. They have long been interested in conservation, sustainability and human collaboration and created the foundation to support global efforts on those issues. This gift to UCLA has been about three years in the making as UCLA administration and the Bedari Foundation came up with the idea of targeting kindness as something to be studied via the social sciences.
“In the social sciences we’re interested in studying society and the ways in which society affects the lives of individuals living in those societies,” said Hunt.
The Institute will tap into research already going on at UCLA and will create possibilities for new areas of inquiry by facilitating collaborations within UCLA and reaching out to scholars at other institutions. Hunt noted that kindness intersects with many areas, including racism, sexism and homophobia. With structure and funding, the Institute can put together teams of researchers that previously would have been unlikely collaborators.
