The story
Founded by Charles Andrews, George F. Comstock, James J. Belden, John Fletcher Hurst, Methodist Episcopal Church, Philo Remington and William H. Hughes on Mar 24, 1870.1
Founding and early growth
Syracuse University grew out of Genesee College, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church as Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York, in 1831. By the 1860s the college's trustees, believing Lima too isolated, sought a new home. At the same time, Syracuse was trying to attract a university. Andrew Dickson White, a Syracuse resident, had pressed for the new Cornell University to be built there, but Ezra Cornell, who had been cheated of his wages by a Syracuse employer as a young carpenter, insisted on Ithaca. Rather than relocate Genesee College, supporters obtained a new charter from the State of New York, and Syracuse University was founded on March 24, 1870. The Methodist church pledged an endowment of $400,000 and the city $100,000. The trustee George F. Comstock gave 25 acres and $25,000, and the rifle manufacturer Philo Remington gave $100,000. Methodist bishop Jesse T. Peck, who had donated $25,000 to the proposed school, was elected the first president of the board of trustees. The university opened in September 1871 with 41 students in rented space in the Myers Block downtown and moved to a hillside tract southeast of the city donated by trustee George F. Comstock, where the Hall of Languages, designed by Horatio Nelson White in the Second Empire style, opened in 1873.
At a time when few colleges admitted women, and many educators argued that women could not master mathematics or the classics, Syracuse was founded as a coeducational institution open to "men and women, white and black." At the opening ceremonies, Peck declared that "the conditions of admission shall be equal to all persons." Men and women took the same courses, and in the College of Liberal Arts the student body was roughly evenly divided by sex through the 19th century, while the College of Fine Arts was predominantly female. Women made up 11 of the 63 graduates of the College of Medicine in its first six years. Chancellor Erastus Otis Haven, a former president of the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, defended the policy and enrolled his own daughter. Women students founded Alpha Phi in 1872 and Gamma Phi Beta in 1874, the first organization to call itself a sorority.
Sarah Loguen Fraser, the daughter of the abolitionist Jermain Wesley Loguen, entered the College of Medicine in 1873 as the only Black student in her class and graduated in 1876, the first Black woman to earn a medical degree from a coeducational school. William Lewis Bulkley earned a doctorate in classics in 1893, only the third African American to earn a doctorate in the United States; he later helped found the National Urban League and the NAACP. William Herbert Johnson, the first Black graduate of the College of Law, was denied admission to the New York bar in 1903 because of his race; he was admitted posthumously in 2019. Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, the university's first Black athlete, starred in football and basketball in the late 1930s; many assumed from his name that he was of Indian descent, and after a newspaper reported that he was Black, Maryland refused to play Syracuse in 1937 unless he sat out.
Syracuse established one of the first architecture programs in the United States in 1873 and awarded the nation's first Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1874. Its College of Fine Arts, opened in 1873 under George Fisk Comfort, was the first degree-granting college of its kind in the country; Syracuse also created one of the first music degree programs (1877) and one of the first academic programs in oratory (1910), and in 1913 became the first university to offer advanced work in photography. It followed with its first doctoral program in 1911, a business school in 1919 and a journalism school, the forerunner of the Newhouse School, in 1934. Evening classes, begun in 1918, made it one of the first universities open to part-time adult students. Under Chancellor James Roscoe Day and board president John Dustin Archbold, a Standard Oil executive who gave the university nearly $6 million, enrollment grew to more than 4,000 by 1917, and the campus added a Carnegie library (1907), Archbold Stadium (1907) and Archbold Gymnasium (1909). Earlier, the Hall of Languages, Holden Observatory (1887), Von Ranke Library and Crouse College (both 1889) had formed the "Old Row" along the brow of the hill, a line of buildings facing a lawn that framed the campus's growth well into the 20th century and remains one of its most enduring images. Chancellor Charles Wesley Flint (1922–1936) eliminated a large deficit and established the Maxwell School and the School of Journalism; under his successor, William Pratt Graham (1937–1942), the Maxwell School and the School of Education became graduate schools.
Syracuse has described itself as nonsectarian since 1920. In the 1920s and 1930s the university changed gradually from a predominantly Methodist institution into a private, nonsectarian one as its student body diversified, a shift symbolized by the opening of the interdenominational Hendricks Chapel at the center of campus in 1930. The university retains ties to the United Methodist Church: its bylaws reserve three trustee seats for representatives of Methodist conferences, and the dean of Hendricks Chapel has traditionally been a Methodist minister. The university also discriminated against Jewish and Catholic students in this period. In the late 1920s it began limiting the admission of Jewish women, and in the early 1930s of all Jewish students, to about 7 to 9 percent of enrollment; Catholics faced discrimination in admissions and hiring, and fraternities, sororities and honor societies excluded Jewish students. University officials have described Syracuse as having rejected Jewish quotas when they were common elsewhere, a claim Strum has disputed. In 1922 two alumni physicians, Gordon Hoople and Leon Sutton, founded Syracuse-in-Asia, which used money raised on campus to run a hospital, a church and a boys' school in Chongqing, China, and sponsored Chinese students at the university; forced out of mainland China in 1951, the program moved to Taiwan in 1958.
Postwar expansion under Tolley (1942–1969)
Under Chancellor William Pearson Tolley (1942–1969), the G.I. Bill brought a surge of veterans after World War II; in 1946 the university admitted 9,464 freshmen, nearly four times the previous class. Tolley gradually ended the quotas on Jewish and Catholic students. Syracuse opened branch campuses in Endicott and Utica, which later became Binghamton University and Utica University. By the end of the 1950s the university ranked 12th nationally in sponsored research, and it added a School of Social Work and some of the nation's earliest computer engineering and bioengineering programs. In 1962 Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. gave $15 million to begin the School of Public Communications that bears his name; its first building, designed by I. M. Pei, was dedicated in 1964 at a ceremony where President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his Gulf of Tonkin speech. From 1962 to 1967 Syracuse was the nation's third-largest trainer of Peace Corps volunteers. In 1966 Syracuse was admitted to the Association of American Universities.
The color line in athletics gave way slowly. After Sidat-Singh, the university did not offer another Black basketball player a scholarship until Manny Breland enrolled in 1952, and in 1956 Jim Brown left the basketball team because starting him alongside Breland and Vinnie Cohen would have put more Black players than white ones in the lineup. In 1961 Ernie Davis became the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy. His life was the subject of the 2008 film The Express, which had its premiere in Syracuse. The chemistry professor George Wiley founded the Syracuse chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1960, and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Sims Hall in 1965. By the late 1960s Syracuse had become a destination for Black students; an alumna who enrolled in 1967 recalled that it was called the "Howard of the North." In 1969 more than 100 Black students presented the administration with ten demands, which led to an African American studies program, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library and what became the Community Folk Art Center; under its founding director, John L. Johnson, the program became the Department of African American Studies in 1979. In 1970 nine Black football players, later known as the Syracuse 8, boycotted the team over racism in the program, and that December a university committee concluded that racism in the athletic department was "real, chronic, largely unintentional." In 2006 the university awarded them the Chancellor's Medal for Extraordinary Courage, and Chancellor Nancy Cantor formally apologized. The late 1960s and early 1970s also brought broader campus unrest, including a 1970 student strike and protests over the university's military contracts, during the brief tenure of Chancellor John E. Corbally (1969–1971).
Growth under Eggers (1971–1991)
Under Chancellor Melvin A. Eggers (1971–1991), enrollment and the size of the faculty reached all-time highs, and the university completed or began about $200 million in construction, including the Carrier Dome, which opened in 1980.
Read the full text
In 1979 Syracuse became a founding member of the Big East Conference, whose basketball games were soon carried by the new cable network ESPN; the national television exposure raised the university's profile with prospective students nationwide. In 1987 the men's basketball team reached the national championship game, losing to Indiana on a last-second shot by Keith Smart. That fall the football team went 11–0 in the regular season, its first undefeated season since the 1959 national championship team; it finished fourth in the polls and tied Auburn in the 1988 Sugar Bowl, and quarterback Don McPherson finished second in the Heisman voting. By the 1980s the university was known nationally for producing sportscasters, many of whom got their start at the student radio station WAER; a 1984 Sports Illustrated article quoted Dick Stockton as saying, "Syracuse is to sports broadcasting what Notre Dame is to football." In 1987, allegations of discrimination against Jewish women on campus received national media attention. In 1989 Black students disrupted the dedication of the $54 million Science and Technology Center to protest neglect of the African American studies department, leading to an agreement to add faculty. In 1990 Syracuse was one of five predominantly white universities to which the most Black high school seniors sent their SAT scores; Black students made up about 6 percent of its undergraduates.
1988 crash of Pan Am Flight 103
On December 21, 1988, 35 Syracuse University students returning from a study-abroad program were killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the deadliest terrorist attack against the United States before the September 11 attacks. The university was criticized for playing a basketball game that evening, and the chancellor later apologized. In 1990 the university dedicated a memorial wall at the entrance to the main campus. It holds a Remembrance Week each fall and awards scholarships each year to 35 seniors, the Remembrance Scholars; a related program for students from Lockerbie Academy was reduced in 2026 to a one-week fellowship.
Restructuring and recovery under Shaw (1991–2004)
Syracuse entered the 1990s facing an economic downturn, a shrinking pool of college-age students and a large budget deficit. Kenneth A. Shaw, who became chancellor in 1991, cut more than $60 million from the budget and eliminated about 600 jobs in the early part of the decade, while reorienting the university toward undergraduate teaching as a "student-centered research university." The university adopted an academic plan and a campus space plan, founded the Center for Public and Community Service (now the Mary Ann Shaw Center) and began the Commitment to Learning campaign, which raised more than $370 million. In December 1995, after a university committee had recommended a wolf, Shaw named Otto the Orange the official mascot, the first since the Saltine Warrior, a Native American figure retired in 1978.
The Shaw era was a high point for the university's athletic profile. Under coach Paul Pasqualoni, the football team played in bowl games in most seasons, including the Fiesta Bowl after the 1992 and 1997 seasons and the Orange Bowl after the 1998 season, led late in the 1990s by quarterback Donovan McNabb. In 1992 the NCAA placed the university's athletic programs on two years' probation for violations in several sports, citing a lack of institutional control, and barred the men's basketball team from the 1993 NCAA tournament. The men's basketball team nonetheless remained nationally ranked under Jim Boeheim, reaching the national championship game in 1996 and winning the national title in 2003. Crowds for both sports regularly filled the Carrier Dome.
In 1995 eight women athletes sued the university under Title IX, arguing that women were underrepresented among varsity athletes. Syracuse added women's varsity soccer in 1996, lacrosse in 1997 and softball in 1999, and in 1997 announced it would eliminate men's gymnastics and wrestling; the wrestling program ended in 2001. In 1999 a federal appeals court partly reversed an earlier ruling in the university's favor and required it to add more women's teams. In September 1998 the Labor Day derecho tore the roofs off apartments in South Campus's Slocum Heights, displaced families from graduate student housing and destroyed many of the campus's trees.
In April 1997, ten Syracuse students — six Asian and Asian American, three Black and one white — were refused seating at a local Denny's restaurant and then beaten in its parking lot by a group of white patrons who shouted racial slurs, joined by two sheriff's deputies working as security guards. Two employees and both guards were fired, but after a five-month investigation the Onondaga County district attorney, William Fitzpatrick, brought no charges, saying the fight was not racially motivated; about 100 students protested the decision. The "Denny's incident" is remembered each year in an exhibit during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Scholarship in Action under Cantor (2004–2013)
Nancy Cantor, chancellor from 2004 to 2013, launched "Scholarship in Action," an initiative to tie the university's teaching and research to the city of Syracuse. The university bought and renovated buildings downtown, built the Connective Corridor to link campus with downtown and in 2008 became a founding partner of Say Yes to Education Syracuse, the program's first citywide effort, which offered tuition scholarships to graduates of the city's public high schools. In 2011 the university opened La Casita Cultural Center, a Latino arts and culture center on the city's Near West Side. In 2005 the university created the Haudenosaunee Promise, which offers scholarships to qualifying students from the Six Nations. The Newhouse School's third building, a $31.6 million facility, was dedicated in 2007 with a keynote address by Chief Justice John Roberts; the $107 million Life Sciences Complex, the university's first new science building since the 1960s, opened in 2008; and Ernie Davis Hall, a residence and dining hall, opened in 2009. The share of underrepresented minority students in the entering class rose from 19 percent to nearly 32 percent. The acceptance rate also rose, and some faculty members argued that research and academic standing were suffering; a 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Syracuse's Slide," described a decline in rankings and selectivity, and Syracuse withdrew from the Association of American Universities the same year. In November 2011 the university fired Bernie Fine, an assistant men's basketball coach for 35 years, after two former ball boys publicly accused him of sexually abusing them as children; Fine denied the allegations. Federal prosecutors closed their investigation in 2012 without bringing charges. Syracuse accepted an invitation to join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2011 and moved from the Big East in 2013. Cantor left in January 2014 to become chancellor of Rutgers University–Newark.
Expansion and unrest under Syverud (2014–2026)
Kent Syverud became chancellor in January 2014 and shifted priorities toward research, campus facilities and military veterans. That November, a student coalition called THE General Body held an 18-day sit-in in Crouse-Hinds Hall, the administration building, to protest the closing of the university's Advocacy Center for sexual assault survivors and other decisions. In 2015 the NCAA sanctioned the men's basketball program for academic misconduct and other violations, vacating more than 100 of Boeheim's wins and suspending him for nine conference games. The College of Law moved into Dineen Hall, the first academic building of a new West Campus, in 2014. The "Fast Forward Syracuse" plan produced a 2017 campus framework, and veteran and military-connected enrollment more than tripled. The Forever Orange campaign, launched in 2019, raised about $1.59 billion, the most in the university's history. In March 2020 the university moved classes online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the late 2010s and early 2020s the university expanded its campus and research profile. Syracuse physicists were part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration that made the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015, and the university opened a Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2023. The Carrier Dome received a $120 million renovation, completed in 2022, that replaced its air-supported roof with a fixed one and added air conditioning, and it was renamed the JMA Wireless Dome the same year. The university opened the National Veterans Resource Center in 2020 and a center in Washington, D.C., in 2024. Applications reached record levels, and in 2022 the entering class exceeded the university's target by about 400 students, forcing some into a converted hotel. After Micron Technology announced plans in 2022 for a semiconductor complex in nearby Clay, the university sought to build research and training programs around it. In 2023 Boeheim's 47-year tenure as men's basketball coach ended, and the university named his former player and longtime assistant, Adrian Autry, to succeed him.
To house all first- and second-year students on the main campus, the university began building three residence halls in the mid-2020s, its first new dormitories since Ernie Davis Hall opened in 2009, with plans to eventually phase out South Campus housing. A 2021 trustees' committee report had recommended moving all student housing to the main campus after finding that students of color were disproportionately assigned to South Campus. The new halls, on Waverly Avenue, Comstock Avenue and University Place, will hold about 1,870 students and are scheduled to open in August 2027; Marion and Kimmel halls and a parking garage were demolished to make room for them.
In 2018 the university expelled its Theta Tau chapter after a video surfaced of a mock initiation featuring racist, antisemitic, ableist and homophobic language. In November 2019 more than ten incidents of racist and antisemitic graffiti were reported on campus, the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity was suspended after members allegedly shouted a racial epithet at a Black student, and students reported receiving a white supremacist manifesto, which the chancellor said was probably a hoax. A student movement, #NotAgainSU, held a sit-in and protests, and Syverud signed a revised version of its demands.
From Wikipedia’s article on Syracuse University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5