Grayson
Louis Kirk (October 12, 1903
– November 21, 1997) was president of Columbia University during
the Columbia
University protests of 1968. He was also a Professor of Government,
advisor to the State Department, and
instrumental in the formation of the United Nations. Kirk was born to a farmer and schoolteacher
in Jeffersonville, Ohio. He
originally intended to become a foreign correspondent, but
fell into educational administration when he served briefly as a high school
principal in New Paris, Ohio during
his senior year at college. He graduated from Miami University in 1924, earned an M.A. in political science from Clark University in 1925, and studied at the École Libre
des Sciences Politiques in 1929 before completing a Ph.D. in
the discipline at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison in 1930. While a student at Miami, Kirk
became a brother of the founding chapter of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. During his graduate studies, he
edited his fraternity's national magazine, The Laurel, to earn
money for tuition. He married the former Marion Sands, a schoolteacher and
daughter of an official of the B&O Railroad, in 1925. They raised one son, John Grayson. After
receiving his doctorate, Kirk spent the next decade on the faculty of the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. He completed postdoctoral research at
the London School of Economics in
1937. In 1940, Kirk was
appointed to the faculty of Columbia University as an associate professor of
government. He was promoted to full professor in 1943 and began a long association
with the U.S. government when he served in the Security Section of the United States Department
of State's Political Studies Division during World War II. Kirk became involved in the formation of
the United Nations Security
Council, attending the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and
the United Nations Conference on International Organization where
the United Nations Charter was
signed. Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed
Kirk as the University's provost in 1949. In 1951, when Eisenhower took leave
to serve as Supreme Allied Commander
Europe, Kirk became acting resident
of the University. He assumed the presidency in 1953 after Eisenhower was sworn
in as President of the United
States. During his tenure at Columbia, he quadrupled the
University's endowment, added a dozen new buildings to the Morningside Heights campus,
and doubled the University library's holdings. However, the University's
academic standing gradually eroded during his tenure vis-à-vis such ascendent
institutions as Stanford University and
the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, leading historian Robert McCaughey to
characterize the epoch as the "afternoon on the Hudson." Kirk's
relationship with the student body began to degenerate in the early 1960s as
students got caught up in the civil rights and anti-war movements and began to
protest openly on campus. In 1959, Kirk started to pursue the construction of a
gymnasium suitable for intercollegiate sports competition. Construction was
delayed for several years due to lack of funds, during which time community
resentment over the University's crowding out its poorer neighbors festered.
When construction began in February, 1968, Harlem community activists and civil
rights figures protested vigorously enough for the University to fence off the
site and post a police guard. Also in 1959, Kirk entered Columbia into its
relationship with the Institute for Defense
Analyses, which would draw much fire from the anti-war movement,
particularly the Students for a Democratic Society, nearly a decade later. The
University and Kirk came under fire in 1967 for attempting to patent and
promote a "healthier" cigarette filter developed by New Jersey chemist Robert Louis Strickman. Questions
regarding the filter's effectiveness began to surface just before Kirk was to
testify before Congress as to its benefits. On April 23, 1968, student
protesters began what would become an eight-day occupation of five university
buildings and the president’s office. Students were protesting the university’s
affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analyses and its plans to construct
a new gymnasium in Morningside Park that had one entrance for Columbia students
and faculty and another entrance for members of the neighboring West Harlem
community, who would not have access to all of the facilities. Kirk initially
agreed to address some of the protesters demands, but ultimately filed trespass
charges against them and called in police to clear the occupied buildings.
After the incident, Kirk resisted calls for his resignation, but stayed away
from graduation and eventually announced his retirement before the start of the
next academic year. In 1974, a newly-constructed gymnasium finally opened.