John Huston Finley

American journalist and academic (1863–1940)

John Huston Finley (October 19, 1863 – March 7, 1940) was Professor of Polities at Princeton University from 1900 to 1903, and President of the City College of New York from 1903 until 1913, when he was appointed President of the University of the State of New York and Commissioner of Education of the State of New York. A promenade along the western bank of the East River between 63rd Street and 125th Street in Manhattan was named the John Finley Walk in 1940 because he had often walked the perimeter of Manhattan.

He was born on October 19, 1863, in Grand Ridge, Illinois, the oldest son of James Gibson Finley and Lydia Margaret McCombs. His father and mother went out as early settlers on the prairies from the East. His father was the great grandson of the Reverend James Finley, the first minister, it is believed, to settle permanently beyond the Allegheny Mountains in Western Pennsylvania, and brother of Dr. Samuel Finley, President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in the middle of the eighteenth century. Mr. Finley's brother, Robert, who died in his early thirties, was associate editor of the Review of Reviews; his sister, Bertha, died as a missionary in Korea. He also served on the board of trustees for Science Service, now known as Society for Science & the Public, from 1925 to 1940. John H. Finley died while sleeping of a coronary embolism the morning of March 7, 1940 in New York City.

During his long and distinguished career he received honorary degrees from over thirty colleges and universities, and twelve governments bestowed thirteen decorations on him. In 1939 Finley was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership.