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UCLA received a gift of $2 million from an anonymous donor and intends to use the funding to establish the Robert E. Archer Chair in the Study of Religion, the first endowed chair of its kind for the campus. Pending the approval of the UCLA Academic Senate, the permanent appointment chair will support a distinguished faculty member in UCLA’s interdepartmental degree program in the study of religion, founded a half-century ago within the division of humanities. Read more

The UCLA Center for the Study of Religion was established in June 1995 in order to coordinate and promote the academic study of religion at the University for members of the campus community as well as for a wider public. The Center sponsors a wide range of programs that explore the role of religious ideas, practices, and institutions within human societies, both historical and contemporary and throughout the regions of the world. The Center also houses the interdepartmental Study of Religion major, which offers UCLA undergraduates a coherent and rigorous framework through which to organize their education thematically around the academic study of religious phenomena across traditional disciplinary boundaries.