Anthony Marx

Anthony W. Marx
Marx in 2014
18th President of Amherst College
In office 2003–2011
Preceded by	Tom Gerety
Succeeded by	Carolyn Martin
Personal details
Born	(1959-02-28) February 28, 1959 (age 65) New York City, US
Children	Josh Anna-Claire
Education	Yale University (BS) Princeton University (MPA, MA, PhD)
Occupation	President and CEO of New York Public Library

Anthony William "Tony" Marx (born February 28, 1959) is an American academic. He became the president and CEO of the New York Public Library in July 2011, succeeding Paul LeClerc.^[1] Marx is the former president of Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Since joining the New York Public Library, Marx has focused on expanding the library’s education programs and on increasing public access to library e-books. He has also prioritized services for researchers and bringing library materials to public schools.^[2]

Marx is an alumnus of the Bronx High School of Science after which he attended Wesleyan University before transferring to Yale University, where, in 1981, he received a B.S. magna cum laude. He received an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1986, followed by M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in politics from Princeton in 1987 and 1990. Marx completed a doctoral dissertation titled "Lessons of struggle: South African internal opposition movements, 1960-1990."^[3] In 2012, one year after he left the college, he received an honorary degree from Amherst College.

After graduating from Yale, Marx spent a year in South Africa participating in the anti-Apartheid movement. Even after returning to the U.S. for graduate school at Princeton, he returned frequently to participate in the founding of Khanya College, a post-secondary college which prepared black students for university.^[4][5]

According to BusinessWeek, one reason the Amherst Board of Trustees chose Marx as president was his support for socioeconomic diversity on college campuses. One of Marx's goals was to make Amherst more accessible to qualified students from lower income families. Marx supports the 'QuestBridge College Match' program at Amherst, an alternative college admission and financial aid process.^[5][6] Marx was arrested for drunk driving in November 2011 after crashing a library-owned vehicle into a parked car ^[7] and subsequently pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor for driving while intoxicated.^[8]

As a board member of the National Book Foundation, Marx was responsible for awarding W. Paul Coates (the father of Ta-Nehisi Coates) a ‘lifetime achievement’ Literarian Award for outstanding service to the literary community. Coates Senior as founder of Black Classic Press has controversially republished anti-Semitic and homophobic screeds from a range of African-American writers. Marx declined to comment on the board’s decision according to The Free Press. (https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/national-book-award-w-paul-coates-antisemitism?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)

Marx has written three books on nation-building, concentrating on South Africa.

• Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960–1990 (1992)
• Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (1998)
• Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (2005)

• John William Ward (professor)

• Anthony Marx bio on Amherst web site
• Article about Marx in BusinessWeek
• QuestBridge website-College Match
• Colleges Face Challenges of the Class Divide: NPR
• Interview on Charlie Rose Show PBS (After 21 minutes)
• Anthony W. Marx South Africa Research Materials at the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections