Rutgers-Newark Marks 80th Anniversary With Jazz, Celebration of History 

In 1908, 30 students attended the first class of New Jersey Law School, which decades later would become part of Rutgers-Newark. The course was held at night to accommodate the ambitious working- and middle-class students who enrolled—many of whom were the children of immigrants in Newark and nearby towns.

Classes were held on the fourth floor of the Prudential Home Insurance Company offices on Broad Street. 

By 1936, the makeshift law school found a home at the former Ballantine Brewery, joining a constellation of small schools and colleges to become the University of Newark.  

Ten years later, on April 30th, 1946, it merged with Rutgers University, furthering Rutgers’ statewide mission.  

Since then, Rutgers-Newark has grown into an institution that fuels economic development and cultural vibrancy in the city, state and beyond. With 88 percent of its student body from New Jersey, RU-N produces internationally regarded, real-world research, often in collaboration with city residents and grass-roots organizations.  

Today, Rutgers-Newark is ranked #36 among public universities nationwide. For two years in a row U.S. News & World Report has ranked at #5 nationwide – and #1 in New Jersey – for Social Mobility, which measures students’ success in moving up the economic and professional ladder. That’s been a key part of RU-N’s mission since day one.

On April 30th, Rutgers-Newark will celebrate its 80th anniversary at an event held on International Jazz Day and showcasing the Institute of Jazz Studies – the world’s largest public jazz archive – which celebrates its 60th anniversary at RU-N. The day will be capped by a live performance at Clement’s Place, an on-campus lounge that hosts up to 100 jazz shows a year, free and open to the public.

“As Rutgers University–Newark marks 80 years as part of Rutgers, we’re honoring a legacy built on opening doors and staying deeply connected to the city,’’ said Chancellor Tonya Smith-Jackson. “That history shapes how we move forward. We celebrate this moment not just to reflect, but to reaffirm our purpose: to expand opportunity, to do research that matters, and to serve New Jersey in ways that lift communities and change lives."

The chancellor, who arrived in August, has no doubt that RU-N has exceeded the expectations of Richard Meder, Rutgers dean of administration, who in 1946 predicted great things for RU-N.  

“I see in the Newark colleges the great possibility of becoming a leading urban center of urban education equal to, indeed surpassing, any such center in the country,’’ he proclaimed. “The joining of the Newark Colleges with Rutgers to form a State University is an important milestone in the history of New Jersey education.” 

Since the merger, Rutgers-Newark has evolved into a  "cornerstone of opportunity for our residents,'' said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who listed RU-N's many contributions to the city.

 "Our partnership with RU-N extends way beyond enrolling and graduating generations of Newark students, many of them first-generation, and creating clear pathways to careers,'' he said. "It fosters critical public health initiatives, small business development, youth mentorship and scholarships, and millions of dollars of research investment into our neighborhoods, advancing solutions in housing, criminal justice reform, and environmental justice. RU-N truly represents the best in academic institutions that rise up from deep roots in their community and yield fruit that truly is sustenance for the people of our city and beyond."

An Urban University Becomes Part of Rutgers 

Rutgers University merged with the University of Newark to broaden its geographic footprint a year after being named the State University of New Jersey. Newark was the state’s largest industrial center, and many students were laborers who aspired to enter white collar professions, especially business and law. 

Rutgers recognized the need for a higher education among city-dwellers, most of whom couldn’t afford to live on a college campus, and the value of an educated workforce and citizenry.

“Urban education is rapidly increasing in importance.... Students attending an urban education center live in their own homes and either give full time to study in day classes or part time to study after the day’s work,” according to the legislation that established the merger.  

“This form of education... enables young men and women to obtain the benefits of higher education who otherwise could not do so. ..and serves to raise the general education,’’ stated the legislation.

From its earliest days, Rutgers-Newark and its predecessors have made higher education accessible to students who are not much different than that first New Jersey Law School class. Long before the 1946 merger, the institutions that would become Rutgers–Newark were already pushing the boundaries of who could earn a degree.

In 1916, the Newark Institute of Arts and Sciences—one of RU-N’s precursor schools—became the first college in New Jersey open to women. 

“One thing I’ve been struck by is how much of a commitment to making higher education accessible for more and more people precedes the Rutgers part of the history,” said Rutgers-Newark Professor Mark Krasovic, who has researched Newark history.

Although it wasn’t until the 1960s, when student activists successfully pushed for a campus reflecting the city’s diverse demographics, RU-N has always been dedicated to enrolling students who were often excluded from higher education.

Some of its most well-known alumni came from Newark’s emerging working and middle class, such as legendary Newark authors Amiri Baraka – the father of Mayor Ras Baraka – who found fame as a Beat Generation poet and returned to the city to pioneer the Black Arts movement. Another literary giant, Philip Roth, who also enrolled in the 1950s, was from the predominantly Jewish Weequahic section, which figures heavily in his fiction.  

Other high-profile alumni include U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (Rutgers Law, ‘76), actor and writer Ramy Youssef, RU-N's 2025 commencement speaker, and Judith Viorst (Class of ‘52), a native Newarker and author of the children’s book classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. Actor and bandleader Ozzie Nelson, of the 1950s television show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, was also an alumnus (Rutgers Law ‘36). 

A 1960s Turning Point

Newark changed dramatically in the late 1950s, when the expansion of Rutgers-Newark intersected with federal urban renewal policies. Entire neighborhoods were leveled, prompting calls for the school to include the residents who were displaced and renew its investment in the city, said Krasovic. 

By the late 1960s, students were openly challenging the university’s role in Newark. Alumnus Richard Roper, who graduated in 1968, recalls the era’s stark imbalance.

“It was predominantly a white institution. The Black student population was less than one percent,” said Roper, who went on to hold a leadership position in the U.S. Department of Commerce under President Jimmy Carter.

Roper described the physical and symbolic separation between campus and city. “Rutgers-Newark was encircled by a metal fence. It made itself clear it was not a part of Newark,’’ recalled Roper.

In 1969, a group of activists, the Black Organization of Students, which Roper founded before graduating and led as president, took over Conklin Hall. They successfully demanded a more diverse student body and faculty.

“That activism resulted in Rutgers–Newark becoming more aware of its responsibility as an urban campus to increase the enrollment of minority students,” said Roper, who participated in the creation of the New Jersey Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF), a groundbreaking program launched in 1968.

Newark’s Latine youth, many of whom were Puerto Rican and organizing as activists throughout the city, also lobbied for change. As a result, their presence at RU-N increased, too.  

"The Conklin Takeover was fundamental also for Puerto Rican students,’’ said Jason Cortés, Rutgers-Newark Chair of the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Department and Dean of the Honors Living-Learning Community. 

Changes resulting from the takeover were reflected in the curricula, leading to the creation of an Africana Studies Department. Rutgers-Newark also created courses and minors in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, said Cortés. 

Today, RU-N is a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), where 35 percent of students are Hispanic.  

By the late 20th-century, Rutgers-Newark was one of the most diverse campuses in the U.S., paving the way for a more inclusive university and helping to change the higher education landscape in New Jersey.  “Rutgers-Newark led in this regard,” said Roper, who participated in the creation of the New Jersey Equal Opportunity Fund (EOF). “Others realized this was not destructive -- that it had a positive impact.”

An Anchor in the City

Over time, Rutgers-Newark became increasingly embedded in the civic, cultural, and economic life of the city.

RU-N's anchor institution mission includes several efforts completed under former Chancellor Nancy Cantor, who arrived in 2014. At cultural hubs like Express Newark, established in the old Hahne Department Store building in 2016, faculty and students collaborate with community artists and others.  

The Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC),  an intergenerational learning and residential program, enrolls half of its students from Newark. They range in age from 18 to 60-something. Nationally recognized for reimagining honors programs, it uses an in-depth holistic admissions process to identify exceptional students from many different backgrounds and experiences.  There is also the Honors College, a multi-disciplinary effort, which doesn’t include a residential component but matches a diverse and promising group of students with faculty mentors.

Rutgers-Newark’s relationship with the city shapes its distinctive approach to research, which often includes partnerships with Newark residents and organizations.  

“Publicly engaged research is part of what makes RU–N exceptional,’’  said Joel Caplan, Senior Vice Chancellor for Research and Collaborations. “It is uncommon for a public research university to combine this breadth and depth of community-engaged scholarship across so many disciplines,’’ he said. 

Research work spans law, public policy, business, the humanities, and STEM fields, often in direct collaboration with government agencies and community organizations.

“We have innovative research and scholarship across all of our schools,” Caplan said. “That includes cutting-edge work in natural and applied sciences, math, brain health, and beyond.”

Well-known faculty have included Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who taught at the law school from 1963 to 1972, and many professors from Rutgers-Newark’s Creative Writing MFA program, founded by author Jayne Anne Phillips in 2007 and regarded as one of the best in the nation.  

Present-day faculty include Salamishah Tillet, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner for her New York Times work as critic-at-large, poet John Keene, who won the National Book Award for poetry that year, and author Rigoberto Gonzalés, who last year won the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement, one of the most prestigious honors awarded to poets. Acclaimed author Alice Elliot Dark is also a faculty member, along with other well-known writers.

In STEM fields, notable faculty members include neuroscientist Denis Paré,  who is known  for his research on fear and anxiety disorders. Fei Zhang  of the Chemistry Department, who, along with Jean-Pierre Etchegaray  of the Biological Sciences Department,  developed an RNA nanotechnology that shows promise as a cancer cure.

Neuroscientist Mark Gluck, who heads the Aging &  Brain Health Alliance, was awarded a $7.4 million federal grant for research on Alzheimer’s risks in African-Americans, who have a greater chance of developing the disease. 

Real-World Research 

Rutgers-Newark’s reputation, particularly its focus on community-centered scholarship and research, attracted two alumni who now serve as deans and credit RU-N with their career trajectories. 

“I felt it was the best school I could have gone to,’’ said Kaifeng Yang, Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA), who arrived at RU-N  from Beijing  as an international student and received his Ph.D. from SPAA in 2003. 

He remembers the close-knit, supportive culture of Rutgers-Newark, something that hasn’t changed. 

 “People here were so welcoming and considerate,’’ recalls Yang, an internationally known scholar of government performance management and citizen engagement. “They supported you however they could and it’s still the same.’’ 

Research at SPAA includes NSF-funded initiatives that support digital literacy among older adults, as well as collaborations with the City of Newark to improve public services through data-driven analysis. 

“That’s the type of thing that is original: first-rate research that affects a community’s life. We are very important to the community. We are indeed in Newark, of Newark,’’ said Yang. 

That same ethos inspired alumna Nancy La Vigne to enroll in the School of Criminal Justice in 1993, where she is now dean. La Vigne, who received her PhD in 1996, returned last year after directing the National Institute of Justice, the U.S Department of Justice's science agency, which funds research informing measures to reduce crime, assist victims, and advance justice. 

The school was established by the New Jersey State Legislature over 50 years ago to build knowledge on effective public safety strategies. “It’s in the school’s DNA to do research that informs policy,” said La Vigne.  

La Vigne cites efforts such as the Newark Public Safety Collaborative, which is recognized internationally for its work in analyzing and sharing data with city government and community groups to co-develop solutions to crime control and prevention. 

“Our reputation is sterling, and it opens doors and opportunities,’’ she said. “I trace my career success to my education at the School of Criminal Justice.” 

Both Yang and La Vigne praised the energy and dedication of Rutgers-Newark students, many of whom come from humble backgrounds. 

“They are very intellectually curious and passionate and very collaborative and supportive of each other,’’ said La Vigne. “The faculty are some of the best scholars in the field, but they are very collaborative and grounded, too.’’ 

Smith-Jackson is counting on that energy to help Rutgers-Newark achieve R1 status, the top classification for academic research. It’s currently classified R2, which designates a school with a high level of research.  

“As Rutgers University–Newark commemorates its 80th anniversary, we are also commemorating a far-sighted decision made by the State of New Jersey in 1946—to establish a public university in Newark that could expand access, cultivate talent, and strengthen the state’s economic future,’’ said the chancellor.  

“Eighty years later, that vision has been realized, and the institution now stands at a pivotal moment—prepared to deliver the next level of academic excellence, research and innovation, and workforce leadership for Newark and for New Jersey. Rutgers University–Newark is, quite simply, a university whose time has come,’’ she said.