New York University. Office of the President.

At New York University (NYU) the decade 1964-1974 had witnessed President James M. Hester's ambitious development efforts on behalf of the institution. Important events, including constructing Bobst Library and installing selective admissions requirements, had begun to transform its character. (1) However, by 1972 major external and internal pressures confronted the University, including student protests, rampant inflation, and declining enrollments. (2) The sale of the University's University Heights Campus in the Bronx to the City University that year and the ensuing reorganization at Washington Square brought only temporary relief to the institution's growing deficit.

By 1975 a national recession accompanied by continuing inflation was driving NYU into ever more severe fiscal difficulty. Dr. Hester left the University that year to become Rector of the United Nations University. He was succeeded at NYU by Dr. John Crittenden Sawhill, an economist with a Ph.D. from the University's Graduate School of Business Administration and a career history in both the corporate financial services and management sector and the federal government. Most recently (1974), he had been deputy and then Administrator of the Federal Energy Office, subsequently reorganized as the Federal Energy Administration, a temporary independent executive agency that oversaw, among other initiatives, "Project Independence"--the Nixon Administration's project "to reduce United States reliance on foreign energy sources." He was forced to resign by President Gerald Ford after proposing in a public interview an increase in the federal gasoline tax, a position opposed by the President. (3) In announcing his appointment, NYU Board of Trustees Chairman John M. Schiff cited Sawhill's "demonstrated capacity for managing large institutions and handling their financial affairs." (4)

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