Florida State Drops Endowment Drive for Waldheim Chair

A 3-year-old fund-raising effort to establish an endowed professorship in international law at Florida State University in the name of Kurt Waldheim has been canceled.

Waldheim, who faces a runoff Sunday in the Austrian presidential election, has been accused of hiding a Nazi past during World War II.

In light of the recent charges, university officials say they will drop their fund-raising efforts for a Kurt Waldheim International Law Chair.

Endowed chairs at the state’s nine public universities cost $1 million. The state contributes $400,000 if $600,000 is raised through private donations.

Only $46,451 has been raised toward the Waldheim chair since the fund-raising efforts began in 1983. Of that, $25,000 came from one source, Citicorp, the banking company.

Part of the money, $28,000, will be used to buy a two-volume collection of U.S. Supreme Court justices’ signatures, said Stephen MacNamara, an associate dean at Florida State’s College of Law..

The fund-raising effort began after Waldheim, a former secretary general of the United Nations who vacationed in Florida, lectured several times at Florida State.