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Up for sale a RARE! "Columbia University" Michael I. Sovern Signed First Day Cover Dated 1954.
ES-7927E
Michael
Ira Sovern (December 1, 1931
– January 20, 2020) was the 17th president of Columbia University. Prior to his death, he served as the
Chancellor Kent Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He
was a noted legal scholar of Labor Law and an expert in employment
discrimination. overn was born in the Bronx to a dress businessman father and bookkeeper
mother. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1949, summa cum York City in 1953, and Columbia Law School in
1955, receiving the prestigious John Ordronaux prize for having the highest
academic average in his graduating class. Immediately after graduation, he
joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota
Law School and taught there until 1957. He returned to Columbia
as a visiting professor in 1957 and then joined the permanent faculty, becoming
the youngest full professor in the University's history in 1960. He has
mediated for New York City in
transit worker contract negotiations, as well as firefighter and police
disputes. From 1962 to 1966, he was the Research Director concerning Legal
Restraints on Racial Discrimination in Employment for the Twentieth Century
Fund. He was a law consultant for Time magazine for fifteen years (1965–1980). Sovern
served as Special Counsel to Governor Brendan Thomas Byrne of New Jersey from
1974 to 1977. He was the co-chairman of the Second Circuit commission on
Reduction of Burdens and Costs in Civil Litigation from 1977 to 1980, chairman
of the New York City Charter
Revision Commission from 1982 to 1983 and chairman of the
State-City Commission on Integrity in Government in 1986. During the 1968
strife on Columbia's campus, he served as chairman of the faculty executive
committee which was credited with easing tensions. Sovern became Dean of the
Law School in 1970 and was named Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs
and Provost in 1979. He became President of Columbia University in 1980. While
President, he quadrupled Columbia's endowment, recruited many prominent faculty
and presided over the opening of the University's main undergraduate division,
Columbia College, to women students. Perhaps most importantly, he greatly
improved the university's financial health by balancing its budget and
introducing strict budgetary controls. He stepped down as president in 1993 and
returned to the faculty at Columbia Law School. He received honorary doctorates
from Tel Aviv University,
the University of Southern
California and Columbia. A professorship in his name has been
endowed at Columbia Law School, and
the American Academy in Rome has
established a fellowship in his honor.