\"Columbia University President\" Grayson L. Kirk Hand Signed Stamp Block COA For Sale

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\"Columbia University President\" Grayson L. Kirk Hand Signed Stamp Block COA:
$104.99

Up for sale "Columbia University President" Grayson L. Kirk Signed Stamp Block. This item is

certified authentic by Signature sales and comes with their Letter of

Authenticity.

ES-6446

Grayson

Louis Kirk (October 12, 1903

– November 21, 1997) was president of Columbia 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 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. 

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