David Kurtzman

David Harold Kurtzman (January 11, 1904 – February 22, 1977) was the fourteenth Chancellor (1966–1967) of the University of Pittsburgh, and the last Superintendent of Public Instruction and first Secretary of Education (1967–1971) of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Biography

Kurtzman became the University of Pittsburgh's vice chancellor for finance in July 1965, "at the height of a financial crisis at the University."

He was appointed acting chancellor after Stanton Crawford's sudden death of a heart attack seven months later, on January 26, 1966. Kurtzman's administration negotiated the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's bailout of Pitt's fiscal woes, through which the university became a state-related institution on August 23, 1966.

According to his obituary, ten years later, as the university continued its search for a permanent chancellor after the bailout, "trustees were heard to say 'If Dave Kurtzman were 10 years younger, we might not be looking.' Then 63, Dr. Kurtzman was two years short of the mandatory retirement age."

On January 13, 1967, the Board of Trustees announced its selection of Wesley Posvar as its new Chancellor, effective June 1, and promoted Kurtzman to the full rank of chancellor until then, and chancellor emeritus afterward.

A ballroom in the university's William Pitt Union was named in his honor.

Kurtzman was born near Odessa, Ukraine, in then-czarist Russia, eventually immigrating to the United States in 1921. Although he did not start high school until the age of nineteen, he finished in under two years, and subsequently earned an undergraduate degree in accounting from Temple University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

He worked for many years at the Pennsylvania Economy League. There, he served as a key aide to David L. Lawrence, mayor of Pittsburgh, and Richard King Mellon, financier, in their effort to build the city's first renaissance after World War II.

Kurtzman joined the newly elected Governor Lawrence in 1959 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as his secretary of administration.

After his time at Pitt, Kurtzman returned to Harrisburg in 1967 as State Superintendent of Public Instruction (later Secretary of Education) under Governors Raymond P. Shafer and Milton Shapp; in this role he became the named respondent in the landmark US Supreme Court decision '' Lemon v. Kurtzman''.

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurtzman, David
Chancellors of the University of Pittsburgh
Secretaries of Education of Pennsylvania
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
Odesa Jews
1904 births
1977 deaths
20th-century American politicians
20th-century American academics