page_title: Grayson L. Kirk
section_title: Columbia University
hierarchical_section_title: Grayson L. Kirk / Columbia University
caption_attribution_description: English: Sukarno receiving Doctoris Honora Causa from Grayson Kirk
context_page_description: Grayson Louis Kirk 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.
context_section_description: 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 Commander of NATO, Kirk became acting president 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 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.
caption: Kirk (right) granting an honoris causa degree to Sukarno (1956)
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