Edward J. Bloustein (born 1925, in New York City New York—9 December, 1989 in New Brunswick, New Jersey) was the seventeenth President of Rutgers University) serving from 1971 to 1989.

Born in New York City, Bloustein, graduated from James Monroe High School in the Bronx in 1942 and served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. He received a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree from New York University in 1948 and subsequently traveled to the University of Oxford as a Fulbright scholar and received a Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Phil) degree in 1950. Returning to the United States, he taught philosophy briefly at Brooklyn College and spent close to a year in Washington D.C. with the Office of Intelligence in the State Department, where he served as a political analyst, specializing in Marxist theory and international political movements in the German Democratic Republic. Subsequently, Bloustein earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 1954 from Cornell University, and entered Cornell's law school earning a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1959. During that time, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Law Quarterly.

Bloustein began his professional career as a law clerk to Judge Stanley H. Fuld of the New York State Court of Appeals , serving from 1959 to 1961. He then joined the faculty of the New York University Law School until 1965, when he was named president of Bennington College. In 1971, following the retirement of Mason W. Gross he was appointed president of Rutgers University.

During his tenure as President of Rutgers University, Bloustein, implemented programs that expanded the institution's research facilities, attracted internationally known scholars to the faculty, and achieve distinction as one of the major public research universities in the nation, leading to an invitation for Rutgers to join the prestigious Association of American Universities. Bloustein died suddenly on 9 December 1989

External links

• Rutgers University
• Leadership on the Banks: Rutgers' Presidents, 1766–2004