Peter J. Liacouras

Peter James Liacouras (April 9, 1931 – May 12, 2016) was an American academic.

Liacouras was the President of Temple University from 1981–2000, and former Dean of the Temple University School of Law (1972–1982). He was chancellor of Temple since his retirement in 2000. During his presidency, the University developed into a Carnegie I classification institution, expansion of academic programs globally, growth in undergraduate enrollment and considerable infrastructure development.

Liacouras' tenure was marked by substantial focus on urban economic and social development. Seeking to capitalize on the University's location in north central Philadelphia, Liacouras sought to market a vision of Temple as the quintessential working class university that would also increasingly appeal to working class suburbanites from the metropolitan Philadelphia area and South Jersey. He employed creative marketing strategies—notably, a marketing campaign with a tagline of "we could have gone anywhere—we chose Temple", and featuring alumnus and Philadelphia native Bill Cosby (later elected to the Temple Board of Trustees).

Liacouras also sought to impart an urban planning vision for Temple University in a concept he called "Temple Town". He invested considerable effort into redeveloping the University's main campus, with the development of on-campus housing at both sides of the campus, planning for new classroom and laboratory facilities to replace antiquated facilities, and the construction of an arena on campus on adjacent land sold to the University by the car dealership that previously occupied the space.

The arena, originally named "The Apollo of Temple" (a pun on the ), was later renamed the Liacouras Center in his honor. The arena houses the intercollegiate basketball teams of the University and other athletics facilities, but a main focal point for its development was the desire of Liacouras to have academic convocations on-campus.

The planning vision to inculcate local businesses along a stretch of the inner main campus was not successfully achieved until after his tenure. His planning vision failed to convince local planning leaders to move the local regional rail station on the far eastern side of the campus in closer to the campus (away from the low-income housing that one walks by on the way to the campus). The "Temple Town" concept was sometimes criticized as an effort to insulate the University's main campus from the surrounding north central Philadelphia neighborhood, and his efforts to promote an esprit de corps, having painted messages on wood structures covering decrepit infrastructure adjacent to the University's Broad Street gateway were sometimes ridiculed.

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