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The PDIA has 38 faculty scholars in 31 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. Foley hopes they will become role models and help persuade other doctors to change their approach to pain, depression and other death-related issues.
Soros runs his philanthropy and his business from the same place, a couple of floors of shopworn offices in New York City. On two floors overlooking Central Park, Soros Fund Management operates with the standard mission-control banks of computer terminals, manned by frantic traders looking for profits in the interstices of monetary flows. His best-known division, the Quantum Fund, is a so-called hedge fund that invests for rich clients. (See box.) The company itself has $18 billion in assets under management. It is also a vulture investor, taking positions in distressed companies in anticipation of a turnaround, and it is a part owner of businesses ranging from food companies to airlines. Soros has not actively managed the funds in years. That responsibility falls to Stanley Druckenmiller, who by most accounts has done brilliantly at it.
The Open Society Institute, operating on a lower floor, is also run by a professional staff, although it is just as likely to convene in Soros' beach house in Southampton, N.Y., or at his country place in Westchester County. Those residences and a flat in London are the extent of Soros' display of wealth. His lack of interest in clothes, cars and other toys of rich boys is apparent. In his spare time he plays tennis, goes skiing or walks on the beach or does mental weight lifting. Soros says he spends a third of his day "thinking, and trying to clarify my own thinking about where I should be going, and where the world is going. Until recently I didn't feel the need to reflect, but I really do feel the need to spend more time on reflection. It takes a lot of effort, and I am frankly stumped on some issues." He is married to Susan Weber Soros, a former art magazine publisher who runs Bard College's respected Graduate Center for Decorative Arts, in Manhattan, which is partly funded by her husband. They have two preteenage children.
It was at his country house that Soros hatched his American program, following what is sometimes called around his office the philosophers' meeting. He gathered a group of intellectuals, a potpourri of philosophers, sociologists and political scientists, and asked them how he could use his fortune to improve the quality of life and institutions in America. Out of that meeting came a broad-brushed decision to devote attention and money to inner-city education, crime and incarceration, and professions such as law and medicine. Some funding is downright civic minded, including a high school-debate program and a $12 million commitment to the Algebra Project, which seeks to improve the mathematical and intuitive skills of students all over the country.
But Soros and his "philosophers" agreed to try to make a big difference by choosing one or more American cities where they could apply many of his foundation's programs simultaneously. The test is Baltimore, where the Open Society Institute will spend $5 million a year for the next five years.