ILR School celebrates 80th anniversary

In the 1930s, New York State Assembly Member Irving Ives from rural Chenango County started advocating for a first-of-its-kind college that would ease a growing number of labor-management standoffs.

His vision received early support from Cornell President Edmund Ezra Day, politically savvy Queens lawyer William Groat and others, as tensions brought production to a halt in many factories across New York state and the nation. 

The concept for a land-grant institution where men and women would learn to balance equity for workers and efficiency for business gained traction in the New York State Legislature, which passed a law in 1944 creating the school.

Eighty years ago this fall, a core faculty of two - Jean McKelvey and Morris Neufeld, fresh off four years of military duty in Italy - cobbled together a curriculum in a matter of hours and welcomed the first class to the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

"From its origins addressing the great industrial relations conflicts of the 1940s to its modern role as a world-leading school studying labor, management and the economy, ILR has stayed true to its mission of providing outstanding education to its students, research that addresses cutting edge issues in the world of work, and outreach serving unions, employers, and the public of New York State and the nation," said Alexander Colvin, Ph.D. '99, ILR's Kenneth F. Kahn '69 Dean and Martin F. Scheinman '75, M.S. '76, Professor of Conflict Resolution.

Read more on the ILR website