Fiat Funds Oxford’s Italian Chair With $1.1-Million Gift

The Italian automaker Fiat is now in the same league as Nissan of Japan, academically speaking. It has pledged $1.1 million to keep Italian studies alive at Oxford University, officials say.

Since 1979, Nissan has funded the chair in modern Japanese studies at Britain’s oldest university, which has been hurt by cuts in government grants.

School officials said Monday that the Fiat money will ensure the next 130 years of Italian teaching at the school, which was founded in the 12th Century and began teaching Italian in 1856.

The Fiat gift is the first major industrial sponsorship gained by Oxford in its five-year campaign to raise $356 million.

Three of Oxford’s 120 chairs--French, German and physics--are vacant because there is no money to fund them, and 18 others urgently need funding to avoid falling vacant following impending retirements, Anne Lonsdale, a university spokeswoman, said.

She said each chair costs $1.6 million to finance “in perpetuity” through investing the cash in endowment funds.