Summer Recap: Former Penn president dies

Martin Meyerson, Penn's sixth president, died of prostate cancer June 2 at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

He was 84.

Meyerson, who served as president from 1970 to 1981, saw Penn through a severe fiscal crisis and set about uniting a sometimes fractious faculty and student body.

His work helped lay the groundwork for the University's meteoric rise in prestige and in national college rankings under successors Sheldon Hackney and Judith Rodin.

Born in 1922, Meyerson started his academic life as an urban planner. He received his bachelor's from Columbia University in 1942 and his master's in city and regional planning from Harvard University in 1949.

Beginning his career in academia at the University of Chicago, Meyerson went on to head three universities: He was acting chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, president of the State University of New York at Buffalo and, finally, successor to Gaylord Harnwell at Penn.

The Penn that Meyerson led was a much different institution than the one students and faculty know today.

Meyerson inherited a budget deficit from Harnwell that put the University in dire fiscal straits - the economic crisis of the 1970s conspired with the collapse of the Pennsylvania and New York Central Transportation Co., in which about a third of Penn's endowment was invested, to seriously threaten the University's financial stability.

His stable hand at the helm and prudent financial management, while not as immediately eye-catching as the building sprees sponsored by Hackney, Rodin and current President Amy Gutmann, were important in setting Penn up to compete with other major research universities.

That's not to say, however, that Penn faculty and students always agreed with his financial policies, which frequently led to programs being cut or scaled back - the most notable of which was Meyerson's decision to drop men's hockey as a varsity sport.

Though these actions led to a series of sit-ins and confrontations, in the end, much of Meyerson's fiscal agenda was adopted as policy.

"He managed those kinds of challenges in a way that allowed him to close out his presidency on a high note," said Mark Frazier Lloyd, the University archivist.

Meyerson also spent a great deal of time pushing his "One University" policy, in which connections between departments were strengthened and interdisciplinary scholarship was emphasized.

Perhaps Meyerson's most visible accomplishment at Penn was his consolidation of the College for Women, the College of Arts and Sciences and graduate programs into the School of Arts and Sciences, demonstrating a renewed commitment to the liberal arts core of Penn that had traditionally been neglected.

Lloyd credited Meyerson's emphasis on the liberal arts as "the chief reason that Penn has advanced in the national academic standings."

Meyerson is probably better known in circles outside of the University for his calm and steady demeanor at Berkeley during the tumultuous demonstrations of the Free Speech Movement in 1965.

A memorial in Meyerson's honor will be held on campus Oct. 5.

Meyerson is survived by his wife of 61 years, Margy, two sons, Adam and Matthew, and seven grandchildren. His daughter, Laura, predeceased him.

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