Stephen Schwarzman’s Path from Trump’s Boardroom to Oxford’s Streets

The new Stephen Schwarzman Centre was unveiled on 13th October 2025, following a £150 million donation made in 2019. Complete with a new Bodleian Humanities Library, a research institute in artificial intelligence, and over 1,000 rooms, the Schwarzman Centre is a new hotspot for foot traffic in Oxford. But who actually is the namesake behind this centre?

Stephen Schwarzman is the current CEO and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, one of the world’s largest alternate investment firms. During his time as a college student at Yale, he founded the Davenport Ballet Society and joined Skull and Bones, a secretive senior society known both for its powerful alumni and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. After briefly serving in the U.S. Army Reserve, he earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1972.

According to Forbes, Schwarzman had a net worth of 43 billion USD as of May 2025. In his  biography What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence (2019), the CEO shares his approach to business and his secrets to success: competition, persistence, and a cut-throat attitude. Reflecting on financial markets in 2007, Schwarzman determined: “I want war, not a series of skirmishes … I always think about what will kill off the other bidder”.

In 2017, he served as chair of President Donald Trump’s Policy Forum, a council of leading corporate executives that convened to consult on job creation and economic growth. Schwarzman’s relationship with the President deepened over time. In 2020, he donated $3 million to Donald Trump’s America First Action PAC, and more than $33 million to Republican candidates, including Kentucky State Leader Mitch McConnell. He later referred to the January 6 Capitol attack as “an insurrection” and “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear”, though he stopped short of directly criticising Trump.

By 2022, he indicated to Axios that it was “time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders”, suggesting he would not support Trump’s electoral campaign in 2024: a position that proved to be short-lived. In October 2025, Schwarzman was once again listed as a donor, but this time to the controversial White House State Ballroom, a 90,000 square foot expansion that required the demolition of part of the East Wing, originally built in 1902.

Blackstone’s Environmental Footprint

The same month, Donald Trump Jr. travelled to Saudi Arabia for an investment summit, where Schwarzman was also in attendance. Blackstone had acquired AirTrunk, a data-centre company central to the AI industry, for $24 billion in 2024. At the summit, Schwarzman hailed AirTrunk’s expansion into the Saudi Arabia region as a sign of Blackstone’s “commitment to deepening [its] presence in the Middle East”. To power their data centres, the firm invested in natural-gas plants, such as the Potomac Energy Center in Virginia. It also backed renewable-energy developer Invenergy to supply cleaner energy for AI infrastructure, a move that presented an ostensibly greener image for the firm.

Not all of Schwarzman’s investments have been as sustainable as advertised, however. The Wall Street Journal published in 2011 that Schwarzman ranked among Palm Beach’s top five water consumers during drought conditions, using 7.4 million gallons between June 2010 and May 2011, compared with an average 108,000 gallons per resident. In 2025, the BBC later reported that water tankers had delivered supplies from standpipes in drought-stricken Hampshire to his 2,500-acre estate, Conholt Park, in Wiltshire, to refill a private lake. Southern Water subsequently banned the practice.

Strengthening and Expanding Footholds in the Middle East

Blackstone first established a presence in the Middle East in Dubai in 2010 to serve the region’s oil-rich investors. In 2017, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), with the goal of launching a $40 billion infrastructure investment vehicle. Four years later, the firm opened an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, which focused on growth in the technology sector. 

Blackstone’s regional expansion also dovetailed with Schwarzman’s long-standing ties to Israel. He has often highlighted his connection to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noting that they attended adjacent high schools. During Netanyahu’s second term in office in 2018, the Blackstone CEO donated $10 million to build the National Library of Israel. Following the Hamas attacks of October 2023, the Blackstone Group pledged $7 million in aid to Israel for humanitarian relief; Gaza faced destruction with little comparable support.

What Does This Mean for Oxford?

Oxford’s acceptance of Schwarzman’s fortune raises a question regarding the ethics of the £150 million gift. What does this choice reveal about the university’s values, with its treatment of Palestine protestors, its links to political power, and its claim of institutional neutrality? 

Founded in 2005, the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement seeks to pressure Israel to comply with international law, end occupation, recognise the rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens, and uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes (as stipulated in UN Resolution 194). In 2024, the BDS Coalition sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to Oxford’s 36 financially independent colleges, revealing that the university was indirectly invested in 49 companies involved in Israeli activities in occupied Palestinian territories, flagged by UN and human rights organisations as illegal. On 20 June 2024, the University of Oxford Gazette revealed that they had begun and accelerated a review of its prohibition of direct investments in companies manufacturing arms illegal under UK law, as well as funds that hold such companies.

In the same open letter, the university instructed the disbanding of the encampment around the Radcliffe Camera, stating that by 7 July they would apply to the court for a possession order. Among the reasons listed were interference with academic activity, restricted access to the library, damage to the lawns, and unlawful activity. Oxford Action for Palestine told Cherwell, “The University has paid their own private security overtime to monitor students, called the police on students peacefully protesting, built fences around both the Radcliffe Camera and the Pitt Rivers Museum, erected barricades at Wellington Square, and bulldozed the memorial garden in the Pitt Rivers encampment all on their own dime”.

Nevertheless, Oxford maintains its role as a University of Sanctuary, expanding scholarships to Palestinian students and offering ‘scan and deliver’ opportunities to scholars and students in Gaza and the West Bank.

In recent years, the University of Oxford has experienced similar controversies regarding benefactors and symbols, from the Cecil Rhodes statue to the Sackler Library. The Schwarzman Centre now joins that lineage. Ultimately, the building stands as a test of whether universities can reconcile their pursuit of knowledge with the moral weight of the money that sustains them.