CUNY Brooklyn College

Early decades Brooklyn College was founded in 1930. [ 5 ] That year, as directed by the New York City Board of Higher Education on April 22, the college authorized the combination of the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College , at that time a city women's college , and the City College of New York , then a men's college (both these branches had been established in 1926). [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] The third oldest higher education institution in what would become the City University system, Brooklyn College became the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. [ 9 ] The school opened in September 1930, [ 10 ] holding separate classes for men and women until their junior years. [ 7 ] [ 11 ] Admission would require passing a stringent entrance exam. [ 12 ] Brooklyn College Library, situated on the East Quad, was designed by campus architect Randolph Evans. In 1932, architect Randolph Evans drafted a plan for the campus on a substantial plot that his employer owned in Brooklyn's Midwood section. [ 13 ] Evans sketched a Georgian campus facing a central quadrangle , and anchored by a library building with a tower. [ 14 ] Evans presented the sketches to the college's then president, Dr. William A. Boylan , [ 15 ] who approved the layout. The land was bought for $1.6 million (equivalent to $ 36.9 million in 2024 ), [ 16 ] [ 17 ] and construction allotment was $5 million (equivalent to $ 115 million in 2024 ). [ 16 ] [ 12 ] Construction began in 1935. [ 18 ] At the groundbreaking ceremony was Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Brooklyn Borough President Raymond Ingersoll. [ 12 ] In 1936, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited and laid the gymnasium's cornerstone . [ 19 ] [ 12 ] The new campus opened for the fall 1937 semester. [ 20 ] [ 21 ] In the 1940s, Boylan, Ingersoll, Roosevelt and La Guardia each became namesake of a campus building.

[ 22 ] [ 23 ] [ 24 ] During the tenure of its second president, Harry Gideonse , from 1939 to 1966, Brooklyn College ranked high nationally in number of alumni with doctorate degrees. [ 25 ] [ 26 ] As academics fled Nazi Germany , nearly a third of refugee historians who were female would at some point work at Brooklyn College. [ 9 ] In 1944, sociologist Marion Vera Cuthbert became the first permanent black faculty member appointed at any of the New York municipal colleges. [ 27 ] And in 1956, with John Hope Franklin joining, Brooklyn College became the first "white" college to hire on a permanent basis a historian who was black. [ 28 ] In 1959, still tuition-free, about 8,000 undergraduates were enrolled. [ 29 ] In 1962, the college joined six other colleges to form the City University of New York , creating the world's second-largest university. [ 30 ] In 1983, Brooklyn College named its library the Harry D. Gideonse Library. [ 25 ] [ 31 ] Nevertheless, Gideonse remains a controversial figure in the college's history; as one account noted, he is "either lauded as a hero and great educator in hagiographic accounts . . . or decried by faculty and alumni as an autocrat who stifled academic freedom and students' rights." [ 32 ] [ 33 ] In addition to his curricular and student life reforms, Gideonse was known for his decades-long campaign to ferret out Communists among the college community and his testimony before congressional and state investigating committees during the Second Red Scare . [ 34 ] [ 35 ] [ 36 ] [ 37 ] [ 38 ] On the other hand, perhaps retaining the memory of the time when, as a University of Chicago professor, he was unjustly accused of being a Communist and advocating " free love ," [ 39 ] Gideonse also attacked those who, without evidence, charged faculty, staff and students with being subversives and defended faculty free speech rights against outside critics.

[ 40 ] [ 41 ] [ 42 ] [ 43 ] The college's third president, Francis Kilcoyne , served from 1966 to 1967. [ 44 ] The fourth president, Harold Syrett , resigned due to ill health in February 1969, when George A. Peck was named acting president. [ 45 ] [ 46 ] John Kneller , Brooklyn College's fifth president, served from 1969 until 1979. [ 47 ] [ 48 ] [ 49 ] These presidents served during what were perhaps the most tumultuous years for Brooklyn College. During the Vietnam War, as they did on other U.S. campuses, student protests rocked Brooklyn College. President Gideonse, in a 1965 television interview, blamed demonstrations on Communists who were "duping the innocents" into demanding more freedom on campus, [ 50 ] leading the New York Civil Liberties Union to criticize Gideonse for "his efforts to smear student groups at the college with the Communist label." [ 51 ] Also in 1965, student protests forced the Gideonse administration to rescind new, stricter dress rules that forbade male students from wearing dungarees or sweatshirts on campus at any time and mandated that female students wear skirts and blouses even in extremely cold weather. [ 52 ] After Gideonse's retirement in June 1966, [ 53 ] a newly appointed dean of administration, Dante Negro, said he was not bothered by the students' more casual dress "that makes it hard to distinguish between the sexes," calling it "a passing fad." [ 54 ] On October 21, 1967, a front-page story in The New York Times reported that the college was virtually closed down by a strike of thousands of students angered by police action against antiwar demonstrators protesting U.S. Navy recruiters earlier in the week. [ 55 ] Five days later, another front-page Times story reported that students had agreed to return to classes after an agreement was reached with college administrators after negotiations. [ 56 ] A few days after that, President Kilcoyne walked out when New York Mayor John V.

Lindsay appeared at the college, citing Lindsay's insult in calling the school "Berkeley East." [ 57 ] [ 58 ] Around the same time, the college's students were involved in campus protests involving racial issues. In May 1968, Brooklyn College news again made the front page of The New York Times when police broke up a 16-hour sit-in at the registrar's office to demand that more Black and Puerto Rican students be admitted to the school. [ 59 ] At trial, a Black Brooklyn judge reacted angrily when one student said they had been reacting to racism and sentenced him and 32 other white students to five days in jail for the sit-in. [ 60 ] In May 1969, 19 or 20 Brooklyn College students faced criminal charges in connection with campus disorders during the spring semester, including raids in which students allegedly ransacked files and smoke-bombed the library. [ 61 ] [ 62 ] [ 63 ] In late April 1970, students demanding more open admissions and racial diversity staged a sit-in at President Kneller's office, holding him and five deans there for several hours. [ 64 ] The next week, in early May 1970, students seized the president's office and other buildings during a student strike upon the Kent State shootings and the Cambodian Campaign . [ 65 ] [ 66 ] [ 67 ] President Kneller terminated classes, but kept campus buildings open for students and faculty, obtaining a court order against students occupying buildings. [ 68 ] [ 69 ] [ 70 ] In October 1974, 200 Hispanic students took over the registrar's office to protest President Kneller's appointment of a chair of the Puerto Rican Studies Department different from that of the person selected by a faculty search committee. [ 71 ] Defying a judge's temporary court order to leave the building, the protesters were supported at a rallies outside Boylan Hall by many student groups and the alumni association, but Kneller refused to rescind his controversial appointment.