In 2000, Desai pledged $2 million to the University of Washington and another $2 million to the University of Florida, along with $1 million to the University of New Hampshire poetry programs. No university ever received more than a few thousand dollars of the pledge. Also in 2000, a handful of poets, including then U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, joined an advisory board for a national poetry foundation that Desai was starting. All the advisers subsequently resigned after Desai displayed erratic behavior. Desai later blamed his erratic behavior on having acquired a rare degenerative nerve disease. Capping off a busy year, Desai married his second wife, Christine Klingler, but was not yet divorced from his first wife, making him a bigamist.