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Chancellor William P. Tolley Records

An inventory of his records at the Syracuse University Archives


Finding aid created by: Dane Flansburgh
Date: 2018



Biography

William Pearson Tolley (1900-1996) was the seventh Chancellor of Syracuse University. He served as Chancellor for twenty-seven years (1942-1969) and under his tenure enrollments and endowments profoundly grew, several buildings were constructed, and the University was transformed into one of the nation's largest private universities.

Portrait of William P. Tolley, 1942

Tolley graduated from Binghamton High School as valedictorian of his class in 1918 and went on to attend Syracuse University. Upon graduating from Syracuse University in 1922, he entered the Drew Theological Seminary in New Jersey and took classes at Columbia University and Syracuse University. In 1924, he earned a Master of Philosophy degree from Syracuse University and was ordained a deacon. In 1925, he married Ruth Canfield, with whom he had three children. The same year, he obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Drew University and went on to earn his master's degree and his doctorate from Columbia in 1927 and 1930.

While serving as the first dean of Brothers College at Drew University, thirty-year-old Tolley was elected president of Allegheny College and became the youngest college president in the country. It was at Allegheny College that he developed a reputation for revitalizing colleges in financial trouble. He lifted the college out of debt, secured a large endowment, and made changes to the curriculum. For this reason, the Syracuse University Board of Trustees' nominating committee saw Tolley as an excellent candidate to replace Chancellor William Pratt Graham, who was stepping down in the midst of World War II and the resulting decline in college enrollment.

On November 14, 1942, Tolley was inaugurated seventh Chancellor of Syracuse University, the second alumnus to serve in that capacity. Much of the first decade of Tolley's tenure was dedicated to adapting the University to meet the needs of students in the military and returning veterans. Many citizens of Syracuse criticized some of Tolley's early acts as Chancellor during these wartime years. For example, he accepted sixty-five Japanese-American students who were released from internment camps to attend Syracuse University on scholarships from religious organizations. While the previous chancellor refused to consider adopting cadet training programs, Tolley believed that the University "could not survive without students, and that meant boys in uniform." Female students were also called to train for war service at the University, enlisting in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and Cadet Nurse Corps. Understanding that the war effort desperately needed nurses, Tolley established Syracuse University's nursing school in June of 1943.

As the war came to an end, Syracuse University experienced an influx of enrollment of veterans. This "GI Bulge" was due to the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, or the GI Bill, a bill that Tolley supported while serving on a Presidential committee. Accommodating these students included creating new programs and acquiring new housing. Tolley established what he referred as the "uniform admission program," accepting veterans regardless of academic status. He expanded academic offerings, reorganized the School of Extension into University College for adult and non-traditional students, and founded Triple Cities College for students in Utica and his hometown of Binghamton. Space on the campus was, at that time, limited, so temporary housing, such as prefab buildings and Quonset huts, were quickly constructed to accommodate the quickly expanding student body.

Growth of student enrollment after World War II required Tolley to aggressively raise funds for real estate and new buildings. Initially timid and nervous about asking for money, he became over time a skilled fundraiser. Establishing friendly connections with rich donors, such as Joseph Lubin and George Arents, allowed Tolley to seek funds for many of the University's building campaigns. Because of this, funding was secured for buildings such as the Women's Building, Lowe Art Center, Shaw Hall, and the Law School's Ernest I. White Hall. The University's expanded physical size, large student body, and recruitment of well-respected faculty members established Syracuse University as a major research institution by the end of the 1950s.

In 1961, Tolley remarked that Syracuse University was "on the threshold of greatness," and announced the "Syracuse Plan." This plan sought to raise $76 million by the University's centennial in order to construct more buildings for the University than in any other time in its history. As a result of funds raised as part of this campaign, Tolley oversaw the building of Newhouse Communications Center I, Ernest Stevenson Bird Library (finished in 1972, three years after his retirement), Grant Auditorium, and the George Manley Field House, amongst many others.

As the University expanded physically, the Tolley administration faced new challenges. Fear of communism on college campuses during the 1950s forced Tolley to protect the University's professors from external and internal criticism, as well as reassert the need for academic freedom. Remembering the issue years later in his memoir, Tolley wrote, "In all universities, we must maintain freedom of inquiry... It is the hope and belief of colleges and universities that in the open competition of ideas the truth will eventually prevail." Additionally, social movements in the 1960s brought its own difficulties to the administration. The civil rights movement and reaction to the Vietnam War spurred several student protests. While acknowledging the students' right to protest, Chancellor Tolley viewed many of these demonstrations negatively, believing they disrupted academic life and represented the interests of only a handful of students. Tolley's reaction to these protests were often severe and strict. On May 13, 1964, the Daily Orange published a photograph of Tolley "in the act of striking" a student protester with his cane. And because of Tolley's significant influence on the campus and wider community, his opinions of these movements mattered. When it was publicized that members of the Community Action Training Center (CATC), an anti-poverty organization founded and operated by faculty and students from University College of Syracuse University, were going into poor neighborhoods to petition for better housing, the University faced criticism from the city administration and the Federal Housing Authority. In response to this criticism, Tolley denounced the CATC, saying that although petitioning for better living conditions was a noble pursuit, the University should be focused on academics rather than social change. In 1964, only a year after its founding, the CATC lost its funding and was disbanded. Years later, Tolley remembered, "The students came to realize I was a hard-liner. We may not have had the warmest relationship during the sixties, but we never had a major uprising or disruption during my term as Chancellor." Regardless, growing student unrest on the college campus continued to climax. Mere months after Tolley's retirement, the University would see the largest protest in its history, the 1970 Student Strike.

Tolley was committed to a diverse campus. He quietly enrolled Japanese American students relocated to concentration camps during World War II. He encouraged the enrollment of international students, expressing the value of a diverse campus of students from different backgrounds. He also reversed previous racist and anti-Semitic University policies that limited enrollment and segregated housing for Black and Jewish students. In the late 1940s Tolley served as the chairman of the Committee on Relations of Minorities to Higher Education, which in a 1947 report asserted that minorities were "entitled to all the opportunities -- including educational opportunities -- open to others in this country." Despite these publicly stated commitments to diversity, Tolley once privately expressed concern and apprehension about the growing Black population in a northern city surrounding an urban college campus.

Tolley retired in 1969 after nearly thirty years of service to Syracuse University.

Note: Much of the material in this biographical note were drawn from Syracuse University: The Tolley Years, 1942-1969 by John Robert Greene (1996), and At the Fountain of Youth: Memories of a College President by William Pearson Tolley (1989).


Scope and Content Note

The Chancellor William P. Tolley Records contain materials that document the activities of Tolley and his administration. Materials include administrative files, correspondence, memorabilia, publications, and addresses. The collection is arranged into five series.

The Administrative files series comprises six subseries. The Boards, committees, and university organizations subseries contains minutes and agendas. Course materials relate to the formation of new courses at the conclusion of World War II, including course outlines, descriptions, and introductions. Financial materials include financial statements, audits, and treasurer reports. Additionally, there are lists of faculty and international alumni. Reports make up the largest subseries, contained in boxes 15-30, and were generated by the University. Finally, the Special events subseries contain materials relating to various special events held on the Syracuse University campus.

The Correspondence-subject files comprise the bulk of the collection. The majority of the correspondence dates between 1953 and 1969. There is only a scattering amount of correspondence dated between 1942 and 1952, the first ten years of his tenure as Chancellor. Chancellor Tolley shared correspondence with a variety of people and backgrounds, including politicians, businessmen, wealthy donors, fellow college administrators, professors, students, and students' families. Of particular interest are four folders titled "Famous signatures," a collection of letters that Tolley received from well-known politicians and celebrities (including President Kennedy, Bob Hope, and Eleanor Roosevelt) during his tenure as Chancellor. Overall, the contents of the correspondence cover a myriad of issues, including civil rights movements, protests, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Regarding civil rights movements, correspondence and material relating to Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Community Action Training Center (CATC), and the pressure that led to the founding of the African American Studies department are important to highlight. Also of note is correspondence relating to Tolley's role in the renewal of the GI Bill for Korean War veterans, known as the Committee on Public Law 550.

The correspondence also offers insight into the modern formation of the Syracuse University campus. This includes pivotal building fundraising campaigns, such as the Women's Building, George Manley Field House, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and Bird Library. Correspondence with wealthy donors indicate that Tolley was a driven salesman for the University's interests. Correspondence with faculty, staff, and students shows the sort of administrator Tolley was often known as: detail-oriented, astute, disciplined, demanding, tough yet fair, and strict. On a personal level, it reveals a man who was loyal, religious, well-read, industrious, and, at times, affectionate. Finally, the correspondence give a sense of some of the things he was passionate for: Syracuse University, rare books, Syracuse University football (although athletics always came secondary to education), and traveling.

The Memorabilia series contains awards, commencements robes, and photographs Tolley collected and received as Chancellor. Some interesting selections from this series is a scrapbook commemorating ten years of service, invitations to the inaugural dinners for President Eisenhower in 1957 as well as President Nixon in 1969, and George Arents medals (the highest honor the University bestows upon an alumnus) for Syracuse University football player Jim Brown and author Shirley Jackson, which neither had accepted. In 1950, new commencement robes were designed for Syracuse University administrators, including an orange robe for Tolley, which, along with his other commencement robe, is held in this series.

The Printed materials series contains magazine articles and clippings relating to Tolley. Also included in this series are brochures. Highlights are a Post Standard review of Tolley's administration, a Training for Victory brochure that addressed the University's response to the war effort, and "An Uncommon Man," a publication about Tolley's time at Syracuse University.

The Writings series encompasses Chancellor Tolley's addresses, dedications, speeches, and a textbook manuscript. Writings include addresses to incoming freshmen, commencement addresses, statements to the Board of Trustees, dedications for new buildings, and journal articles that he wrote. Highlights of these writings include the opening remarks for Triple Cities College and University College, a statement to the Board of Trustees regarding academic freedom, and a message to Syracuse University students from Tolley during World War II. Another highlight is the manuscript for a philosophy textbook that Tolley wrote with other philosophy scholars for returning World War II veterans.


Restrictions

Access Restrictions:

Please note that the collection is housed off-site, and advance notice is required to allow time to have the materials brought to the Reading Room on campus.

Access to recordings requires advance notice to produce a use copy.

Please note some materials in this collection are restricted in accordance with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Use Restrictions:

Written permission must be obtained from the Syracuse University Archives and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.


Related Material

The University Archives originally held one collection for Tolley. In 2018, Tolley's personal papers were separated from his Chancellor records and are now the William P. Tolley Papers.

Several photographs were removed from this collection and placed in the Photograph Collection and William P. Tolley's portrait files at the Syracuse University Archives.

The Archives holds an extensive clipping file on Tolley as well as several portrait files. The Photograph Collection also features items related to Chancellor Tolley.


Selected Search Terms

Names

Arents, George, 1875-1960.
Brown, Jim, 1936-
Charters, Alexander N.
Feinstone, Sol, 1888-1980.
Lewis, William Dodge, 1870-1960.
Lubin, Joseph.
Newhouse, Samuel I.
Poister, Arthur, 1898-1980.
Schwartzwalder, Ben, 1909-1993.
Tolley, William Pearson, 1900-1996.
Congress of Racial Equality.
Crouse-Hinds Company.
George Arents Research Library.
International Business Machines Corporation.
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
State University College of Forestry at Syracuse University.
Syracuse University -- History.
Syracuse University. Libraries.
Syracuse University. University College.
Upstate Medical Center (N.Y.)

Subjects

Adult education.
Baccalaureate addresses.
Civil rights movements.
College campuses.
College environment.
College sports.
College students.
College trustees.
Commencement ceremonies.
Korean War, 1950-1953.
Students -- Political activity.
Veterans.
Vietnam War, 1961-1975.
World War, 1939-1945.
College administrators.
Higher education.

Types of Material

Academic addresses (documents)
Academic robes.
Administrative reports.
Audiotapes.
Awards.
Certificates.
Commemorative plaques.
Correspondence.
Manuscripts for publication.
Memorabilia.
Minutes (administrative records)
Photographs.
Sound recordings.
Speeches (documents)

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Preferred citation for this material is as follows:

Chancellor William P. Tolley Records,
University Archives,
Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

The materials included in the Chancellor William P. Tolley Records were transferred and donated to the University Archives in a series of acquisitions between 1959 and 2004. Most of the materials were placed in the Archives in the period following Tolley's retirement. In 1993, materials from the Tolley Room at Syracuse University's Bird Library were placed in the Archives. Upon Tolley's death in 1996, his daughter Katryn Tolley Fritz donated additional materials from his office.

Processing Information

This collection was fully processed in 2018 by Dane Flansburgh. Materials were placed in acid-free folders and boxes. Photocopies were made of original newspaper clippings, which were then discarded. Oversize items were placed in oversize boxes.


Arrangement

The collection is arranged alphabetically. The Correspondence-subject series is arranged alphabetically by last name or subject, and further arranged chronologically within the folders.


Table of Contents

Administrative files

Correspondence-subject files

Memorabilia

Printed materials

Writings


Inventory