Gerald Benjamin

Gerald Benjamin, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the founding director of the university's Benjamin Center for Public Policy Initiatives. Benjamin, who joined the SUNY New Paltz faculty in 1968, served as chair of the Department of Political Science, as presiding officer of the faculty and from 1996 to 2008 as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He also served for two years as director of the Center for New York State and Local Government Studies at SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany and from 1981 to 1993 as an elected member of the Ulster County Legislature, which he chaired from 1991 to 1993.