In addition to his business ventures, Belfer is well known for his philanthropic endeavors. He is a major donor to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he founded the Robert and Renée Belfer Court for early Greek and prehistoric art in 1996. For decades, he has given to
John F. Kennedy School of Government, which named
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs after him in 1997. He also donated to
Weizmann Institute of Science as well as the
Israel Museum. His philanthropic activities have focused on medical institutions. He donated to
Yeshiva University, whose tallest building, Belfer Hall, was named after his family, and served as the chair of the board of overseers of the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where the Belfer family had established the Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies. He also served on the board of
Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, to which he donated $250 million over the years. The school's $100 million Belfer Research Building, dedicated in 2014, is named after him. Belfer sat on the board of directors of
Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and donated $35 million to found the Robert A. and Renée E. Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science. He also was the founding donor for the
Neurodegeneration Consortium, a multi-institutional collaboration to find treatments for Alzheimer's disease, which is based out of
MD Anderson Cancer Center. Belfer has also supported the Aging Brain Initiative, an interdisciplinary research effort within the
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at
MIT. Belfer also endowed a professorship at
Columbia University, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations, which is held by the political scientist
Jack Snyder. He has supported the
ADL Center for Technology and Society and its launch of the Belfer Fellows program, which brings awareness to online hate speech and harassment and works to promote equitable online spaces. == Personal life ==