Lester Crown

<youtube align="right" size="tiny" caption="Lester Crown on his emotional attachment with Israel">sYn_kVPgpuw</youtube> Lester Crown (born 7 June 1925) is a Chicago tycoon who has been on the Forbes 400 list since 1982. He is one of leading donors to pro-Israel causes, and a key backer of Barack Obama. He is a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and of the Tel Aviv University's Board of Governors. He established the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University with an initial gift of $10 million in 2005. He and is family also fund the Crown Fellows program in American History at Brandeis. His foundation funds Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation, a front for Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism.