Billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros has passed control of his $25 billion grant-making foundation network to his son Alexander Soros, who intends to continue the group’s focus on human rights and justice, the Open Society Foundations confirmed Monday.
The younger Soros has spent two years as president of his 92-year-old father’s super PAC, which supports Democratic politics and politicians, Michael Vachon, a spokesman for George Soros, said Monday. Through the PAC, George Soros was the largest individual donor in the 2022 midterm elections, The Washington Post previously reported.
Alexander told the Journal that he and his father “think alike” but that he would broaden his father’s work by embracing issues such as voting and abortion rights.
Alexander also said he was concerned about the possibility of Donald Trump regaining the presidency in 2024. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” he told the Journal. The OSF declined to make Alexander or George Soros available for interviews with The Washington Post.
The younger Soros added that he believes that free speech has become too restricted on college campuses and beyond, drawing a contrast with the prevailing viewpoint within some liberal advocacy groups.
“I have some differences with my generation in regard to free speech and other things — I grew up watching Bill Maher before bed, after all,” Alexander told the Journal.
The elder Soros, a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust, earned a fortune through the hedge fund he founded in 1970, and he channeled that wealth into support for democratic causes in more than 100 countries. He became a major backer of free expression and other democratic priorities in Eastern Europe and Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall and later expanded his focus to the United States, Africa, Latin America and Asia, according to his biography.
His support for liberal causes has inspired vitriol from some corners of the right and made him the target of antisemitic attacks and conspiracy theories. Last month, Elon Musk claimed that Soros “hates humanity” and “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization,” a remark condemned by the head of the Anti-Defamation League as feeding anti-Jewish conspiracies.
In a 2018 interview with The Post, Soros said the attacks can blunt his impact.
“It makes it very difficult for me to speak effectively because it can be taken out of context and used against me,” Soros said.
Alexander, an avid sports fan who earned a PhD in history on the impact of Heinrich Heine on Friedrich Nietzsche, is the elder of two sons from George’s marriage to his second wife, Susan Weber. He sits on the boards of Bard College, the Center for Jewish History, Central European University and other organizations.
The Soros foundations fund a vast range of groups in the United States, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Planned Parenthood.
In 2021, OSF awarded nearly $30 million to America Votes, for purposes including supporting “nonpartisan voter engagement in multiple states,” OSF said. America Votes calls itself “the coordination hub of the progressive community.”
The Soros foundations gave $400,000 to Arizona Wins, to support policies that promote electoral participation, and $1 million to Florida Rising, for work “to protect and strengthen democracy.”
OSF also provided $5 million to the African American Policy Forum, and over $20 million to Borealis Philanthropy to support racial justice advocacy. And OSF gave over $2 million to Asian Americans Advancing Justice, for uses including strengthening a network of community leaders and organizations combating anti-Asian violence and discrimination.
Overseas, one of Alexander’s main interests has been the war in Ukraine, said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that receives OSF funding.
“From the beginning of the crisis he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about what’s going on in Ukraine. He was in daily contact with the Soros Foundation in Ukraine, talking to different governments about their policy towards Ukraine,” Leonard said. Soros was “looking at it on an hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute basis.”
OSF describes itself as the largest independent funder of Ukrainian civil society and citizen groups for more than three decades. Its funding since Russia invaded Ukraine last year has included supporting the evacuation of civilians, delivery of emergency medical supplies, the work of journalists and the investigation of war crimes.
Russian authorities have increasingly held up George Soros as a boogeyman in recent years, and they banned his charitable organizations in 2015 after more than 25 years of work that included financing internet centers at dozens of universities, helping Russian scholars travel and study abroad and funding contemporary art centers.
