Contact: Fred Knubel
Director of Public Information
212-854-5573, fhk1@columbia.edu FOR IMMEDIATE USE
October 21, 1997
William J. McGill, Former Columbia President, dies at 75
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Led University Through Critical Decade of the '70s
William J. McGill, distinguished psychologist, author and president of
Columbia University during the decade of the 1970s, died Sunday, Oct. 19, in La
Jolla, Calif. He was 75 years old.
He had suffered a severe heart attack last Wednesday and was a patient in
John M. and Sally B. Thornton Hospital of the University of California, San Diego.
He had been chancellor of UCSD from 1968 to 1970, before joining Columbia, and
had been an adjunct professor there again for the past 17 years.
Dr. McGill was a leading mathematical psychologist, highly regarded as
both a theoretician and experimentalist. He made lasting research contributions
in quantitative psychology, particularly in information processing, among them
the precise measurement of reaction times to stimuli. At the time of his death, he
had nearly completed a book with a former Columbia colleague on how the brain
processes sound and light to expand the range of human perception.
But it was Dr. McGill's skill in handling conflict that brought him public
attention as chancellor of UCSD and recommended him for the Columbia
presidency at the turbulent start of the 1970s. He calmed the San Diego campus
when student demonstrations occurred and a controversial appointment was
criticized. At Columbia, he began his decade-long term by dealing with student
unrest face-to-face, at times plunging into crowds of anti-war and civil rights
protesters to talk with their leaders. His legacy at both Columbia and San Diego
includes heightened curricular and scholarly attention to human rights issues.
"Dr. McGill made an invaluable contribution to Columbia during a crucial
decade in its history," the University's current president, George Rupp, said. "He
continued to be a great friend of Columbia, and he will be missed tremendously
both here in New York and in California."
"Bill McGill was one of the great figures in higher education in the period
following World War II," said University of California President Richard C.
Atkinson. "He was a superb scientist, distinguished president of two of
America's leading universities, and a passionate advocate of university
involvement in addressing the challenging issues facing society."
William James McGill was born Feb. 27, 1922, in New York City, the son of
a musician and grandson of an Irish immigrant dockworker. Raised in the
Bronx, he sold shoes and ran an elevator at Radio City Music Hall as a schoolboy.
After receiving bachelor's and master's degrees at Fordham University, he
earned the Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1953 at Harvard University and
was an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until
1956, when he joined Columbia. He was chairman of the psychology department
from 1961 to 1963 and left in 1965 to co-found the psychology department at the
newly established UCSD campus.
His research contributions were at the forefront of advanced knowledge of
sensory mechanisms. He published many scientific papers analyzing the flow of
sensory information, particularly between the ear and the brain. The week before
he died, he and Malvin C. Teich, professor emeritus of engineering science and
applied physics at Columbia and now a professor at Boston University, had spent
days polishing a final text for a new book. It will propose that the brain amplifies,
and in the process adds, a special kind of noise in transmitting visual and
auditory signals up the sensory pathways so that we can hear and see both very
faint and very strong sound and light.
"It's a book he long wanted to write, and it will be published," Dr. Teich said
today.
In 1968, Dr. McGill chaired a search committee to select a new UCSD
chancellor for what was becoming a restless campus. When five finalists refused
the offer, he was recruited for the post himself, which he accepted warily.
Confrontation ensued when he stood his ground against then-governor
Ronald Reagan in re-appointing Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse and when
he reasoned with militant students who in sit-ins and teach-ins demanded a
curriculum emphasizing Marxist doctrine. His style and courage, as well as his
scholarly stature, attracted the search committee at Columbia, and he became the
University's 16th president on Sept. 1, 1970, at the age of 48.
He immediately faced many of the same anti-war and civil rights protests
on a campus memorably struck by student unrest two years earlier. He
modernized the administration, created a dialogue with student leaders and
finished the job of peacemaking that his predecessor, Andrew W. Cordier, had
begun.
During his presidency, the University's fund-raising performance
recovered dramatically; he balanced the budget and completed $100 million in
new construction. New buildings included the Sherman Fairchild Center for the
Life Sciences, the Julius and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center, the
International Affairs Building, the Geosciences building at Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory and the Dodge Physical Fitness Center and an expanded Avery
Hall.
Faculty honors and research advances multiplied across the campus.
The concept of general education, pioneered at Columbia in 1919, was
expanded to systematically introduce humanities instruction at the graduate and
professional levels. Curricular innovations in the schools of architecture,
engineering, business and medicine resulted , and a new Center for the Study of
Human Rights was established. In 1976, the University created and endowed the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, which supports the work of outstanding
young scholars on annual appointments. The programs became models for other
American universities.
When he announced in 1979 that he would retire the following year, the
chairman of the Trustees, Arthur Krim, said:
"You leave Columbia with its academic excellence intact, its campus
vibrant, its administration reorganized and its budget in balance. You have won
the confidence of students and faculty, not by throttling but by encouraging the
rights of dissent so important to an academic environment, yet leading whenever
required with a firm and just hand. All this adds up to a considerable personal
accomplishment. We Trustees who have lived through these years with you
believe it to be the single most outstanding contribution made by any university
leader in the past decade to the preservation and enhancement of a great private
university."
Dr. McGill returned to UCSD in 1980, became an adjunct professor of
psychology and continued his research. In 1983 McGraw-Hill published his book,
The Year of the Monkey: Revolt on Campus, in which he chronicled his first year
as UCSD chancellor. His office was in William J. McGill Hall, the former
psychology-linguistics building named for him in 1990 in honor of his
contributions as administrator and scientist.
Dr. McGill was awarded 22 honorary degrees and received Columbia's
highest honor: the Alexander Hamilton Medal of Columbia College. He was
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, received the Gold Medal of
the National Institute for Social Science and was a member of the Society of
Experimental Psychologists. He was chairman of the New York State Special
Advisory Panel on Medical Malpractice in 1975-76, of the American Council on
Education in 1976 and of the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public
Broadcasting in 1977.
He is survived by his wife, the former Ann Rowe; a daughter, Mrs. Thomas
B. (Rowena) Springer of Reno, Nev.; a son, William R., of San Diego, and two
grandsons. The funeral will be private. Memorial services are being planned.
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