Grayson Louis Kirk (October 12, 1903 – November 21, 1997) was an American political scientist who served as president of Columbia University during the Columbia University protests of 1968. He was also an advisor to the State Department and instrumental in the formation of the United Nations. Early life Kirk was born to a farmer and schoolteacher in Jeffersonville, Ohio. He originally intended to become a foreign correspondent, but fell into educational administration when he served briefly as a high school principal in New Paris, Ohio during his senior year at college. He graduated from Miami University in 1924, earned an M.A. in political science from Clark University in 1925, and studied at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in 1929 before completing a Ph.D. in the discipline at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1930. While a student at Miami, Kirk became a brother of the founding chapter of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. During his graduate studies, he edited his fraternity's national magazine, The Laurel, to earn money for tuition. He married the former Marion Sands, a schoolteacher and daughter of an official of the B&O Railroad, in 1925. They raised one son, John Grayson. After receiving his doctorate, Kirk spent the next decade on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He completed postdoctoral research at the London School of Economics in 1937. Columbia University In 1940, Kirk was appointed to the faculty of Columbia University as an associate professor of government. He was promoted to full professor in 1943 and began a long association with the U.S. government when he served in the Security Section of the United States Department of State's Political Studies Division during World War II. Kirk became involved in the formation of the United Nations Security Council, attending the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and the United Nations Conference on International Organization where the United Nations Charter was signed. Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Kirk as the University's provost in 1949. In 1951, when Eisenhower took leave to serve as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Kirk became acting president of the University. He assumed the presidency in earnest in 1953 after Eisenhower was sworn in as President of the United States. During his tenure at Columbia, he quadrupled the University's endowment, added a dozen new buildings to the Morningside Heights campus, and doubled the University library's holdings. However, the University's academic standing gradually eroded during his tenure