Dr. Saul Bernard Cohen was the sixth President of Queens College, serving from Fall 1978 through Spring 1985.
“The Board of Higher Education last night chose Saul B. Cohen as president of Queens College in a vote that was expected to affect the direction not only of the Flushing campus, but also of the entire City University.
Dr. Cohen, a professor and director of the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., was chosen by a vote of 10 to 4. He takes office July 1.
The vote followed an often‐stormy 45-minute debate in which students from Queens College argued vehemently in favor of Dr. Nathaniel H. Siegel, the 48 year‐old sociologist who had been acting president of Queens College for the last year and a half.
The $46,000‐a‐year post became open late in 1976 when Joseph Murphy resigned to become president of Bennington College in Vermont. At that time Dr. Siegel was named acting president.
A nine‐member search committee, made up of members of the Board of Higher Education and faculty members, students and alumni from Queens, interviewed more than 70 candidates and sent the Chancellor a list of three nominees. These were Dr. Cohen, Dr. Siegel and Norman Cantor, Chancellor of the University of Illinois. Dr. Cantor took his name out of consideration a month ago after his record in Illinois was sharply criticized by a student newspaper.
The choice between Dr. Cohen and Dr. Siegel was generally regarded as a choice between two views of the relationship between Queens College and the rest of the City University system.
Queens College, with 21,000 of the 191,000 students in the City University, is generally regarded as the academic ‘jewel’ of the system. Most of its students come from middle class Queens families and neighborhoods, and it has managed to maintain high academic standards at a time when other institutions in the system have had to lower standards.
... Dr. Cohen, on the other hand, had the support of Dr. Kibbee and many other faculty members at Queens. At a board meeting two weeks ago the Chancellor praised him as a scholar and fund‐raiser who ‘offers an opportunity for a new and fresh approach to the administration of Queens College, which must be seen as part of CUNY.’”
“The president of Queens College, the largest college in the City University, will resign to become paid director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the group is scheduled to announce today.
The official, Dr. Saul B. Cohen, 59 years old, who has led Queens since 1978, has presided over the college during a period in which it has gained recognition as one of the most desirable of the university's 18 undergraduate campuses.
Henry Taub, president of the Joint Distribution Committee, an international relief organization, is expected to announce that Dr. Cohen will be nominated as executive vice president of the philanthropic agency at its annual meeting on Dec. 12. He has been designated to replace Ralph I. Goldman, 70, who is to retire in March.
... Dr. Cohen, a Harvard-educated geographer, has made a career in the academic world, but has long been active as a volunteer in Jewish and Zionist activities.
Under the direction of Dr. Cohen, who is paid $71,070 a year, Queens College created schools of music and education from what had been departments devoted to the two disciplines, and two years ago, City University's Law School. The college, which has an enrollment of 16,500, has $160 million in construction under way on its campus in Flushing, including a science building and a library.
A major feature of Dr. Cohen's administration has been an emphasis on academic standards at a time that the City University generally has been struggling to accommodate less prepared students. Officials in the university say the college has benefited from its location, drawing heavily from many of the leading high schools in the borough.
The college's academic reputation has also been enhanced during Dr. Cohen's presidency by the extension of its programs at the master's degree level into 25 different fields. Much of the City University's graduate work in music, environmental sciences and mathematics is conducted on the Queens campus.
The presidency of Queens College will be filled through a search by a committee appointed by the City University's board of trustees, as is the practice in filling all such vacancies.”