Ray L Heffner

Ray L. Heffner guided Brown University through the political turmoil of the late 1960s before stepping down as president after less than three years, unhappy about continuing campus tensions. Dr. Heffner became Brown’s 13th president in October 1966 as anti-Vietnam War protests were gathering force on campuses and black students were pressing colleges to admit more African-Americans and expand black studies. A tipping point for Dr. Heffner came in April 1969 when he signed an agreement with the Navy to continue its Reserve Officer Training Corps program on campus, despite a vote by faculty members to phase it out. Ray Lorenzo Heffner Jr. was born in Durham, N.C., on March 7, 1925, to Ray and Gladys Heffner. The family later moved to Seattle, where his father became a professor of English at the University of Washington. His mother was a high school English teacher. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Mr. Heffner completed his bachelor’s degree in English literature at Yale in 1948. He went on to earn a master’s degree and a doctorate at Yale. While teaching English at University of Kentucky, he met Ruth Adele Cline, who was also teaching there; they married in 1951. Besides his wife, he is survived by two sons, David and Christopher, and three grandchildren. Before being named president of Brown, Dr. Heffner had been a vice president and also taught at both Indiana University and the University of Iowa. After leaving Brown, he returned to the classroom at Iowa. He retired in 1996.