Directions to LIU Brooklyn
LIU Brooklyn — in the heart of downtown Brooklyn just minutes from Manhattan — is a continually evolving learning environment, pulsing with vitality. The core of its success has been its ability to change with the times and to serve new constituencies.
Our campus has been providing outstanding educational opportunities to students from all walks of life for three-quarters of a century. It is the original unit of the University, the eighth-largest private university in America, with six campuses and seven international sites.
Founded in 1926 by Brooklyn civic leaders, the Campus sought from the start to include religious and racial minorities, admitting students solely on merit. It has come a long way from the days when it enrolled 312 students. Today, our student body numbers more than 11,000. In the past decade, while other universities lost students and cut programs, our enrollment doubled and our course offerings and student services increased significantly. We credit our success to our fine academic reputation, top-notch faculty, excellent facilities and personalized student advising.
Our diverse body of students from across the U.S. and around the globe have much in common: their humanity, their thirst for knowledge and their quest for the American dream.
More about LIU's Brooklyn Campus
Department of Athletics Mission Statement
The mission of the LIU Brooklyn Department of Athletics is in full harmony with that of the University as a whole: to open the doors of the city and the world to men and women of all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds who wish to achieve the satisfaction of the educated life and serve the public good.
The Department of Athletics embraces the principles of sportsmanship and ethical conduct, policies and procedures of the University as well as the Bylaws of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Northeast Conference. During our men's and women's athletic events, the student-athletes are encouraged to achieve high levels of excellence. With this positive sportsmanship conduct, the student-athletes achieve individual development, maintain the institutions integrity and create a promising foundation for their future. The Department is fully committed to gender equity. Equal opportunities for athletic competition and scholarship support are provided to both men and women, in an environment free of sexual harassment or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age or disability.
The Department of Athletics is strongly committed to its fundamental objectives of graduating student-athletes, supporting academic growth, winning national championships, providing employment opportunities, conforming to the requirements of Title IX and securing the fullest development of student-athletes' health, academic well-being and social well-being.
Why the Blackbirds?
According to Dr. Elliott S.M. Gatner, LIU Brooklyn’s early historian, the first athletes representing the university in intercollegiate competition in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s were known as the Blue Devils, basically because their uniforms were blue in color. However, sometime between February and October of 1935, the uniform color was changed to black and the Blue Devils became the Blackbirds.
History has it a basketball reporter for the borough’s famed Brooklyn Eagle, who came to New York from the agrarian midwest, observed the LIU players in their black uniforms running up and down the court dribbling the basketball, reminded him of blackbirds back home, bobbing up and down as they fed in the cornfields. In filing his story on the game’s outcome, he used the nickname "Blackbirds," and the name stuck.
In LIU’s earliest days, the basketball players were called "Beemen," after their legendary coach, Clair F. Bee, who is now in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.