Established in 1926, Long Island University's mission is "to open the doors of the city and the world to men and women of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, who wish to achieve the satisfaction of the educated life and to serve the public good and to awaken, enlighten and expand the minds of its students." The campus is recognized by the New York Times as being one of the most diverse in the U.S. LIU Brooklyn was also recognized by the Daily Beast as the third-safest college campus in the United States.
The first class at the campus’ original site, located at 300 Pearl Street, had 312 students from the surrounding neighborhoods. The majority of students were immigrants or the children of immigrants, many of whom were the first in their families to ever attend college or school in general. In 1929, the university affiliated itself with the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, now known as LIU Pharmacy. In the late 1960s, plans were proposed by several trustees to sell the Brooklyn Campus in order to finance a new graduate campus on Long Island. Students and faculty held demonstrations protesting those plans. In 1972, administrators and faculty members negotiated the first collectively bargained faculty agreement at a private university in the United States. In the fall of 2016, the university locked out its faculty union and assigned administrators and replacement hires to teach classes. The lockout resulted in a student walk out and protest and the loss of two weeks of semester time. The LIU faculty responded by voting for ouster of the president, Kimberly Cline.
Athletics
Prior to the 2019-2020 school year, the Long Island University system unified its athletic programs and now all LIU athletic teams are referred to as the LIU Sharks and compete as a unified LIU athletic program. Prior to 2019, LIU Brooklyn was the only unit of the LIU system to compete in Division I athletics and had 18 varsity teams. The school mascot was the Blackbirds. The men's basketball team won the National Invitation Tournament in 1939 and 1941 under the guidance of coach Clair Bee. However, in 1951, the Blackbirds basketball players were involved in the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal that resulted in five players receiving a suspended sentence and one player a one-year prison sentence. The basketball team was suspended for six years from 1951-1957. Games were played at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater until recently. In 1997, The Blackbirds were seeded 13th in the East Region of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. They lost in the first round to Villanova, 101–91. In 2011, LIU Brooklyn won both the Northeast Conference regular-season and tournament championship, winning 13 in a row at the end of the season. The Blackbirds were seeded 15th in the East Region of the 2011 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament losing in the first round to 2nd-seeded University of North Carolina.
