Dr. Joseph P. McMurray was the fourth President of Queens College, serving from Spring 1965 through February 1971.
“Joseph P. McMurray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and a career government economist and housing finance expert, was appointed president of Queens College yesterday by the Board of Higher Education.
...Last night, Mr. McMurray and former Federal Judge Simon H. Rifkind, a member of the board and chairman of its selection committee, agreed that Mr. McMurray’s executive and administrative background weighed more heavily in his choice than his academic credentials.
But Mr. Rifkind and the committee also pointed to Mr. McMurray’s appointment by the board in 1959 as the first president of Queensborough Community College. The committee said it ‘heard unchallenged reports that he filled that office with distinction and success.’
Although several members of the 20-man board were known to favor the naming of a Roman Catholic to the post, Mr. McMurray, who is a Roman Catholic, said he would not have accepted the job if he thought he had been appointed for that reason.
Mr. McMurray, who said ‘I’ve been a teacher in everything I’ve done,’ declared that his major goal would be to ‘make the public image of Queens College equal to the high standing it has among professional educators.’
Mr. McMurray was born in the Bronx on March 4, 1912. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1936.
He went to Washington as a junior statistician and rose eventually to become a leading economist for the Government and Senate committees. In 1954, Mr. McMurray was for four months executive director of the New York City Housing Authority and in 1955 he became New York State Commissioner of Housing in the Harriman Administration.
He was appointed president of the newly created Queensborough junior college in 1959. Mr. McMurray headed President Kennedy’s post-election task force on housing and left the Queensborough campus in 1961 to become chairman of the Home Loan Bank Board.”
“Dr. Joseph P. McMurray has resigned the presidency of Queens College to become head of the College of New Rochelle, a Roman Catholic institution for women. He will be its first nonclerical president.
Queens College, which Dr. McMurray has headed since 1965, has an enrollment of 28,000. He said he had accepted the new post so that he might have greater ‘direct contact’ with the students and faculty members. The College of New Rochelle has 900 students.
...In the spring of 1969 there were disorders on the Queens campus, and the police were called in three times. At the college’s 45th commencement on June 3 last year, when 4,245 degrees were awarded, a group of about 500 students, faculty members and sympathizers held a counter-commencement to protest the policies of the college administration.
...‘I am not pessimistic about Queens College: quite the opposite! Nor do I think that as president I do not have the strength or the experience to continue, but, for other reasons, it is time for me to leave.’
...In the last two years of turbulent scenes on many of the campuses of the City University’s nine senior and six community colleges, five presidents resigned their post at City, Kingsborough Community, Manhattan Community, Hunter and Brooklyn Colleges."
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