Leonard Lief

Who was Leonard Lief?

Leonard Lief was founding president of Lehman College, a Bronx institution that is one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York. Lief was the college's president from 1968 to 1990, solidifying it as a college with a liberal arts focus on a tree-lined campus. Lief, an Elizabethan scholar, died after a long bout with Parkinson's disease at the age of 83, on July 30, 2007, at his home in New Rochelle, New York. The Lehman College's campus library is named Leonard Lief Library in his honor. His successor is Ricardo R. Fernández.