Barry Munitz

Barry Allen Munitz (born July 26, 1941) has been a senior administrator at the University of Illinois and the University of Houston, a business executive at Maxxam, Inc., chancellor of the California State University system, and chief executive officer of the world's wealthiest art institution, the J. Paul Getty Trust. He is on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

Munitz was born and raised in Brooklyn, the son of parents from Eastern Europe. Munitz earned a B.A. degree in classics and comparative literature at Brooklyn College. He earned M.A. and Ph. D. degrees in comparative literature from Princeton University.

Munitz's first teaching job was at the University of California, Berkeley from 1966 to 1968, where he also worked as a part-time assistant to the UC system president, Clark Kerr. When Kerr resigned and became chairman of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education in 1968, he brought along Munitz as a staff associate. In 1970 Munitz moved to the University of Illinois, and was soon promoted to vice president for academic affairs at the University of Illinois, Chicago from 1972 to 1976.

When Philip G. Hoffman resigned as president of the University of Houston to become the first chancellor of the newly created University of Houston System, the university was looking for someone who could fill the shoes of its popular leader from 1962 to 1977. They turned to 35-year-old "wunderkind" Barry Munitz—then serving as vice-president and dean of faculties in the system office—to be the new president of the University of Houston. It was anticipated that Munitz could work with the business community to build up the University's endowment. After several years, Munitz's cultivating the business community led to an offer to join a local corporation, Maxxam, Inc., that was busy acquiring other companies in leveraged buyouts.

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