In the rarefied world of multimillion dollar gift-giving, Paul Smith’s College, named for a 19th-century hotelier and tucked in the forests of northern New York State, carried little cachet. So when Joan Weill, the wife of the Wall Street billionaire Sanford I. Weill, proposed a $20 million gift that would lift the struggling college’s fortunes, its officials saw national prestige on the horizon. Mrs. Weill’s only condition — one that experts say is becoming more common among major donors — was that the institution become Joan Weill-Paul Smith’s College. But a state judge rejected that change, ruling in a decision released on Wednesday that Mrs. Weill’s money did not give the college license to violate a provision in its founder’s will that enshrined his father’s name on the college in perpetuity.

October 7, 2015 ・ From The New York Times