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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

Heiskell:

And the search started over again [laughter].

Q:

Were you on that search committee?

Heiskell:

Slightly, yes. And a very likable fellow by the name of Joseph Murphy appeared on the scene. He was half Catholic-Irish and half-Jewish. And he had for the last five years been president of Queens College. And the crunch came in seventy--whenever it was--and he was made responsible. He was told he had to cut costs by 20%, something like that. So he had to fire 88 tenured professors, which isn't very much fun. I think Joe Murphy took this job to get just as far away as he could [laughter] from Queens, New York City, and what have you. Now, he had a wife and a child, and she was not hired [laughter], or anything. And they--the president is given a house up there. He had considerable trouble dealing with the academic society there, even though he tried every trick on the map. But they are a very difficult, individualistic, underpaid bunch of people, who have a very high opinion of themselves--if that takes care of most things. And I think Joe lasted five years; his wife only lasted three [laughter]. She left. She left him. And all the time there was this terrible financial pressure, and we were always running a deficit, and they didn't have a surplus of applicants. So they tended to be a bit too easy on their acceptance standards. But, it was an interesting mix of students, some very bright.

Oh, yes. There was one other thing I guess I got involved in. In those days the government would loan colleges quite large sums of money, at something like two or, three percent. The buildings of





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