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Press release


  • 2 December 2004
  • Iraqi exile's £1m thank you to support Sussex students


    Mr Naim Dangoor has donated £1 million for student scholarships

    Mr Naim Dangoor has donated £1 million for student scholarships

    Students taking up places at the University of Sussex are to benefit from a share of a generous £1 million scholarship donation by a former Iraqi refugee.

    Naim Dangoor, an Iraqi Jewish businessman, escaped anti-Semitic persecution when the Baath Party (later headed by Saddam Hussein) came to power in Iraq in the 1960s. He fled to England, where he had studied engineering decades earlier, and built his property empire in exile.

    Now he wants to thank the country that gave him refuge by setting up a scholarship scheme for talented students from England and Wales.

    The 1,000 Dangoor scholarships of £1,000 each will be available to students starting their courses in 2005 at the 1994 Group of leading research universities, which includes Sussex. There will be between 40 and 80 scholarships available at each of the 16 universities.

    Naim Dangoor, 90, says: "I promised myself that if I was ever able to help a British university student I would, to assist the native people of the country that welcomed me. But I never dreamt I would be able to make such a big contribution." Mr Dangoor had made a similar promise to himself some 70 years earlier, when he was an undergraduate at the University of London.

    Professor Alasdair Smith, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the 1994 Group, says: "This truly generous donation from Naim Dangoor will be of enormous help to talented students contemplating a university education. The 1994 Group is well placed to ensure that this money reaches those students who would most benefit, enabling them to take up places at institutions with proven excellence in both research and teaching, across the UK."

    The formal launch of the scholarships will take place at a reception tonight (2 December), which will be hosted by University of Sussex Chancellor Lord Attenborough and attended by the Dangoor family, the Minister for Higher Education Kim Howells, senior officers from a range of higher education bodies and the Vice-Chancellors of the 1994 Group.

     

    Notes for editors 

    · The 1994 Group universities are: Bath; Birkbeck College, London; Durham; East Anglia; Essex; Exeter; Goldsmiths College, London; Lancaster; London School of Economics; Reading; Royal Holloway, London; St Andrews; Surrey; Sussex; Warwick; York. For more about the 1994 Group, see www.1994group.ac.uk

    · For more about the Dangoors, see www.dangoor.com

    For press information, contact Maggie Clune at the University of Sussex Press Office. Tel 01273 678 888 or email at M.T.Clune@sussex.ac.uk

    www.sussex.ac.uk

     

     

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