David J. Steinberg, longtime Long Island University president, dies at 85

David Joel Steinberg, a scholar who distinguished himself in academia and steered Long Island University to cultural and scholastic acclaim as its president for nearly three decades, died on Feb. 28 after suffering a heart attack, his family said.

Since retiring 10 years ago, Steinberg, 85, had lived in Glen Cove with his wife, Joan Steinberg, and learned to play the piano and wrote columns and books.

David Steinberg took the helm of LIU in 1985 and is credited with boosting endowment and enrollment at its campuses in Brookville and Brooklyn. He retired in 2013.

Steinberg was famously generous to students. He hosted dinners at the president's house in Brookville and afterward took his guests to the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts.

Steinberg had helped to establish the Tilles Center, and it grew to be a regional venue for top-tier artists. He also supported the George Polk Awards for journalism, which the university administers for honoring brave reportage.

“He always had time and interest in everyone," Joan Steinberg recalled. "There wasn't anything he couldn't get his brain into.”

Born on April 5, 1937, David Steinberg grew up in Manhattan, where his father, Milton Steinberg, was rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue and a prominent figure in American Jewry.

His father died at age 47; Steinberg was 13 years old. The loss had a profound effect on him.

David Steinberg dedicated the next years of his life to scholarship, studying at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He later earned his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees from Harvard College.

Steinberg became a scholar of Southeast Asia and specialized in modern Philippines history.

He was a tenured professor at the University of Michigan, and later became a vice president at Brandeis University before taking the top job at LIU.

His first marriage, to the former Sally Levitt of Great Neck, ended in divorce. The couple had two sons, Noah and Jonah.

In 1987, David Steinberg married Joan.

Early in their courtship, the two realized they had met years earlier. Joan's family had belonged to his father's congregation, and both families had spent summers at Brant Lake in the Adirondacks.

David Steinberg's sons spoke at his funeral Friday at L'Dor V'Dor synagogue in Oyster Bay, as their father asked of them in his funeral plans.

“He was very devoted to certain principles of the greater good, so his generosity was both on a small scale and a large scale,” recalled Jonah Steinberg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Vermont.

Noah Steinberg said his father "was very much focused on raising, in every sense, his children, and educating us and making sure we were loved and supported."

"That was a big piece of who he was," said Noah Steinberg, chairman and chief executive of WING, a leading real estate investment company in Hungary and Poland.

He said his father was "very proud of making LIU as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, with as broad of a background.”

State Regent Roger Tilles of Manhasset, who also served as LIU board chairman, said David Steinberg helped "bring the board’s standards up in terms of fundraising and helped to make a difference with the university."

In his writings over the years, David Steinberg showed concern about cuts to education and documented battles over race and class.

In a "Preface to the Future: A History of Long Island University Through the Turbulent Sixties," Steinberg said he had hoped to document how "one American university (LIU) lost its momentum, and almost its capacity to survive, in the tumultuous decade of the sixties."

"I am fascinated by the history of this wonderful institution I was lucky enough to serve," Steinberg wrote.

David Steinberg also is survived by three stepchildren and 14 grandchildren and step-grandchildren, family said.

Burial was at Mount Hope Cemetery in Westchester.

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.