It is with deep sadness that Barnard College and the Barnard Board of Trustees mourn the passing of Leonard Tow. His entrepreneurial spirit and deep belief in the power — and necessity — of giving back touched lives around the world, including many at Barnard.
The child of Russian immigrants, Tow was born in Brooklyn in 1928 during the Great Depression. As a young man, he attended Brooklyn College, graduating in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
While at Brooklyn College, he met his future wife, Claire Schneider, who was majoring in education. They married three weeks after her graduation in 1952. Together, the Tows raised three children, including Barnard alumna and former trustee Emily Tow ’88, and embarked on a life of philanthropy focused on the arts, education, and juvenile justice.
After Brooklyn College, Tow received his master’s degree and doctorate in economic geography from Columbia University. He also taught undergraduates at the Columbia Business School.
After academia, Tow shifted to what was then a brand-new industry: cable. He began working at Touche Ross & Company, before becoming assistant to Irving B. Kahn, co-founder of the TelePrompTer Corporation, a media firm whose primary product was the teleprompter, an electronic device that displays text to an actor or speaker as a prompting aid. Tow was eventually promoted to senior vice president of TelePrompTer, which became one of the largest cable television providers in the United States. When he left the company, it was to embark on the next part of his life as an entrepreneur. Tow, along with his wife Claire, founded Century Communications, a telecommunications company. When the Tows sold it in 1999, it was the fifth-largest cable television company in the United States.
Although Tow made his mark in the cable and telecommunications industries, his greatest legacy may be his philanthropic work. In 1988, the Tows founded the Tow Foundation as a way to give back to the communities that shaped them. The foundation, which is currently helmed by Emily Tow, offers grants to innovative projects in medical research, the arts, and higher education, as well as nonprofits with a focus on equity and justice. To this end, the Tow Foundation has given grants to Bard College, Tow’s alma mater Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Wesleyan University, and others. In addition, the foundation has provided financial support to medical institutions, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and some of New York’s greatest cultural institutions, such as Lincoln Center and PEN America.
Since 1991, Tow’s commitment to investing in great educators has uplifted academic life at Barnard. Thanks to the Tow Foundation’s generosity, the Tow Professorships for Distinguished Scholars and Practitioners awarded eminent post-tenure scholars $50,000 to advance their research and teaching over many years. Today, the Foundation supports the Claire Tow Professorships, named in honor of Tow’s late wife Claire, which are permanently endowed positions awarded to some of the most celebrated scholars at the College in recognition of their outstanding research.
The Foundation also supports learning at Barnard through the Tow Family Award for Innovative and Outstanding Pedagogy, which recognizes exemplary faculty members who have combined scholarship and pedagogy in creative ways. This gift empowers its faculty recipients to pursue long-term research projects and professional development opportunities, to the end of advancing innovative teaching methods at the College.
In 2016, the Tow Foundation, on behalf of Leonard Tow and daughter Emily Tow, gave $25 million to the College, one of the three largest gifts in Barnard’s history. The gift aided in the creation of the state-of-the-art Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning, which is now the beloved home of the Barnard library and several academic centers.
As a first-generation college student, Tow credited his own education with opening the door to a different life. His support of programs at Barnard including the Tow Foundation Public Service Internships reflected his hope that through philanthropy, students might have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams as he had done. Over the lifetime of the internship program, the Tow Foundation awarded grants to hundreds of students, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, to pursue otherwise unpaid work in public service and social impact fields.
Tow’s deep engagement with education and the arts extended far beyond Barnard’s gates. In 2012, he and his wife signed The Giving Pledge, a public promise made by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals to give away 50% of their wealth to charitable causes. In 2019, Len received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in recognition of his “vision of a more just world.”
Tow was preceded in death by his wife, Claire, in 2014, and is survived by their three children, Andrew, Emily, and Frank; as well as eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
“The Barnard Community is deeply saddened by the passing of Len Tow. He was an accomplished leader, a brilliant thinker, and a very kind man,” said Barnard President Laura Ann Rosenbury. “Over the course of decades, Len, the Tow Family, and the Tow Foundation have generously supported the academic and cultural institutions that are the heart of New York City. Len’s legacy is firmly woven into the fabric of Barnard as his generosity supports our world-class faculty and our amazing students in so many ways.”
“Leonard Tow was a titan of industry and philanthropy,” said Laura Blankfein, Chair of the Barnard Board of Trustees. “His passing is a tremendous loss for everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him. Leonard Tow’s impact on Barnard College, and New York City as a whole, was profound and will be felt for generations to come.”
The College community extends its most heartfelt condolences to Len Tow’s family, friends, and loved ones.
