Francis Leo Lawrence - Presidency of Rutgers

Presidency of Rutgers

Lawrence's twelve year tenure at Rutgers was received with a mix of criticism and praise. He was praised for impressive fundraising efforts,the improvement of undergraduate education and for the increased academic quality of incoming students, as well as the construction of new academic facilities for the Mason Gross School of the Arts, the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and the Rutgers-Newark Center for Law and Justice. He was criticized for promoting "big time" athletics, which, many objected, lowered university prestige and diverted funds away from academic purposes. Nevertheless, he was also credited with retaining some members of the distinguished faculty recruited by his predecessor Edward Bloustein, some of whom earned several prestigious awards (including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Science, the MacArthur Foundation "genius" prize, Guggenheim Fellowships, and Sloan Fellowships). Comments made in 1994, in which Lawrence urged that higher education should not be denied to disadvantaged students who might lack the "genetic, hereditary background to have a higher average" on standardized tests, were publicized in 1995 by a union in negotiations with the Rutgers administration and led to calls for his resignation and student protests,including one that brought a televised basketball game to a halt, as protesters staged a sit-in on the court.

Lawrence has served as President of the North American Society for French Seventeenth Centurey Literature, on editorial boards for several scholarly journals, as the board chair of a monograph series, on the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, and on the boards of several national higher education organizations. He retired from the office of president in 2002. As President Emeritus, he has returned to teaching, with an appointment as University Professor at Rutgers.