Vacancy Filled

There was nothing really wrong with twelve-year-old Queens College. It had a tree-lined 52-acre campus across the East River from Manhattan, an able faculty of 225, some 3,000 students and no real worries about raising money. Since it was one of the four independent branches of the College of the City of New York,* it could count on handsome support from the taxpayers. Queens College's only real trouble was that for more than a year--ever since Dr. Paul Klapper resigned--it had not been able to find a president.

Last winter, it came close. New York City's Board of Higher Education was ready to name Bryn J. Hovde, historian (The Scandinavian Countries), housing expert and head of Manhattan's New School for Social Research, to the $15,000-a-year job. But some Queens residents had a candidate of their own: Acting President Margaret V. Kiely. Others, including Brooklyn's Roman Catholic Tablet, attacked Hovde because he had been critical of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and had attended the Moscow-sponsored World Congress of Intellectuals in Breslau last summer (where he had, it was admitted, made a stout anti-Soviet speech--TIME, Sept. 6).

Even New York City's Mayor William O'Dwyer got into the ruckus. He belabored the board for ignoring anti-Hovde sentiment in Queens". Later, after public reminders that the appointment was none of his business ("An unseemly bumble," cried the New York Herald Tribune), he backed down. But Hovde withdrew his name from the pot. So, a short time later, rdid another promising candidate, Walter Consuelo Langsam, president of 1,200-student Wagner Memorial Lutheran College on Staten Island. On reflection, he decided to stay where he was. The board, which didn't care much for Miss Kiely, started its search all over again.

Last week the board found its man. He was trim, 44-year-old John J. Theobald, dean of administration at Manhattan's City College for the last three years. Before that he had taught civil engineering at City College, supervised some highway surveys in New York State. Stepping into the Queens presidency after the past year's tumult and shouting didn't worry him; he called it "a perfectly wonderful opportunity." He thought he had been around the city's colleges long enough to know his way.

* Others: City College (in Manhattan), Brooklyn College and Hunter College (with campuses in Manhattan and The Bronx).

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