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Lawsuit on donations

Ed Pilkington

AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES are closely watching a legal action in New Jersey that could determine whether they continue to have the freedom to spend billions of dollars in annual donations as they see fit. The two-day hearing, which began on Tuesday, has been brought by the children of Charles and Marie Robertson, among the largest benefactors to Princeton University. They seek control of the endowment, saying it has not been spent in accordance with their parents' wishes.

The donation of $35 million was made in 1961 out of a supermarket inheritance.

Charles Robertson, a graduate of Princeton, stipulated that the endowment should be used to train graduates to enter government service in international affairs. The benefactors' son William said in a statement: "University officials secretly used the foundation's growing endowment as a piggy bank, diverting more than $200 million to activities, projects, programmes and personnel unrelated to the mission," William Robertson said in a statement. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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