The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) in January received a whopping $1.6 million donation from online classifieds giant craigslist, the eighth largest Internet company in the world. The funds, along with a $1.5 million match from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will be used to create the five-year-old center’s first endowed faculty chair.

“The BCNM and craigslist share a fundamental respect for alternative thinking in the public interest,” says Ken Goldberg, director of the interdisciplinary center, which encompasses more than 100 scholars from approximately 30 departments, including engineering, architecture, philosophy, film and journalism. “Our mission is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media by facilitating research with unorthodox ideas, designs, artworks and experiments.” 

Establishing an endowed chair, Goldberg adds, gives added legitimacy to new media, defined on the BCNM website as anything from Wifi to Wii to Wikipedia.

Go to http://bcnm.berkeley.edu.