Dr. Anthony W. Marx

Anthony W. Marx is President of The New York Public Library, the nation’s largest library system, with 88 neighborhood libraries and four scholarly research centers that receive about 17.4 million physical visits each year. Since joining NYPL in 2011, Marx has strengthened the Library’s role as an essential provider of educational resources and opportunities for all ages. Under his leadership, the Library has created new early literacy and after-school programs for children and teens, dramatically increased free English language classes and citizenship support for immigrants, and improved services for scholars and students who rely on the Library’s world-renowned research collections. During his tenure, Marx has helped facilitate the largest set of physical renovations in the Library’s history and the single largest increase in City funding NYPL has ever received. Under Marx, the Library has also become a national leader on bridging the digital divide through its efforts to increase access to e-books, expand computer classes and coding training, and a groundbreaking program that provides home internet access to families of low-income students. Before joining the Library, Marx served as president of Amherst College from 2003 to 2011, during which time the college nearly tripled enrollment for low-income students. Before Amherst, Marx was a political science professor and director of undergraduate studies at Columbia University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Marx has a BA from Yale, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a PhD, also from Princeton.