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Dr. Schiff: Naturalist and Scholar
By Merton Reichler, Profesor The Statesman Friday October 3, 1969 Ashley L. Schiff, Associate Professor of Political Science and Master of Benjamin Cardozo College, died Wednesday morning, October 1. He was 37 years old. Although born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brooklyn College, it was his boyhood experience in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens that served to direct most of his later professional life. There he developed as interest in natural resources, and, combining the passion of a devoted naturalist and conservationist with the scholarship of a brilliant and imaginative political scientist, he produced his first work as an extension of his Harvard doctoral dissertation , his book published by Harvard University Press in 1962, Fire and Water: Scientific Heresy in Forest Service. The titles of the courses Mr. Schiff taught at Hofstra University, at the University of Southern California and at Stony Brook indicate clearly the breadth and depth of his professional interests: administration and the social sciences, politics of city planning, the administration of natural resources and the politics of administration. At the time of his death he was preparing a full-length comparative study of Canadian and American forest research administration. His work had received extensive support from Resources for the Future, Inc. But Ashley Schiff will be remembered at Stony Brook for his intense and dynamic commitment to the undergraduate body. Soon after he came to Stony Brook in 1964 he took an active interest in the preservation and enhancement of the aesthetic and living qualities of the campus, which he always thought of as an organic community. The culmination of his commitment was found in his selfless dedication to Cardozo College, which he served as Master. By careful, thorough and above all imaginative devotion, he made the cultural and intellectual programs of Cardozo College not only serve the wishes of his students, but also serve as an intellectual challenge in addition to their normal academic program. Not only was there always something going on at Cardozo College, but what was going on was always worthwhile. Ashley Schiff, cited by two graduating classes as a faculty member in a small list of those regarded as having made the greatest contribution to Stony Brook is gone. Surviving him are his parents, his wife, his three children and his brother.
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