From the Transcript:

The University of California, San Diego with the help of the local Greek community recently created the Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas Chair in Ancient Greek History and the Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Chair in Byzantine Greek History. Donations totaled more than $1 million.


The campus Gerry and Jeannie Ranglas and Carol Vassiliadis each presented leadership gifts for the two UCSD endowed faculty chairs, while contributions from members of San Diego's Greek community and cultural organizations provided the remainder of the funding.

UCSD expects to establish an endowed chair in Modern Greek History. When the $500,000 goal for the chair is met, UCSD will become the only university in the United States to have endowed faculty chairs for all three major eras of Greek history. Money raised for the UCSD Greek History chairs contribute to UCSD's $1 billion fund-raising initiative, The Campaign for UCSD: Imagine What's Next.

UCSD's new endowed chairs will cover: Ancient Greek history from circa 800 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great, circa 300 B.C.; more than 1,000 years of the history of the Byzantine Empire, from circa 324 A.D. to 1453 A.D.; and the last 200 years of Greek history, from circa 1800 A.D. to the present.

The phrase 'endowed chair' always makes me giggle. On a semi-related note, in one of the rooms used by the department of Classics at Queens when I was there, there is a large, ornately-carved chair (it reminded me of something out of a fantasy novel). Apparently it was the gift of someone (I don't think specifically to the Classics department) who had endowed a chair and apparently thought they actually had to provide a chair. Or so RSK told us eager grad students ...