WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Jan. 13, 2003--Williams College President Morton Owen Schapiro is pleased to announce a $5 million gift from Edgar M. Bronfman '50 to help extend need-blind admission to all international applicants to the college.

Last year Williams announced plans to admit qualified international students regardless of their families' abilities to pay and to promise to meet 100 percent of their financial need for four years. Such need-blind admission previously was restricted to applicants from the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Financial aid funds for other overseas students was limited. International students currently comprise 7 percent of the undergraduate population at Williams.

Bronfman's gift is only the latest in his and his family's ongoing commitment to international exchange and understanding at Williams. Last year alone, the Bronfman Family Fund made it possible for 10 foreign students to attend the college and for four Williams students to study abroad.

"Edgar Bronfman shares with the college and trustees the dream of making Williams a truly international institution" Schapiro said. "His generous gift will help us endow our international scholarship program in perpetuity and guarantee that Williams remains a world-class institution."

Financial aid for international students also was boosted by a significant portion of a $7.4 million anonymous commitment announced in October.

Bronfman long has been recognized as an outstanding statesman with access to some of the world's top decision-makers. He is president of both the World Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Restoration Organization and former chairman of Seagram Co. He served the Clinton administration in 1998 as chairman of an advisory commission on Holocaust assets in the United States and, a year later, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Bronfman is author of The Making of a Jew, published in 1995 by Putnam.

At Williams Bronfman served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1974 to 1980 and long has been active in alumni affairs. He received an honorary degree from the college in 1986 and has made generous gifts in support of the sciences and the Jewish Religious Center.

Bronfman and his wife Jan Aronson live in New York, N.Y. He has three daughters and four sons, including Matthew Bronfman'81 and Samuel Bronfman II '75.