Oct. 11, 1903-Nov. 24, 1986

Dr. John Cranford Adams served as Hofstra's second president from 1944-1964 and was President Emeritus at the time of his death. The campus theater is known as the John Cranford Adams Playhouse and there is a John Cranford Adams Chair in Literature. He was the principal founder of Hofstra's annual Shakespeare Festival. It was from his model that Hofstra's Globe Stage, a 5/6 replica of Shakespeare's stage, was built in 1950.

Dr. Adams began his career as an instructor in English at Syracuse University in 1928. Two years later, he joined Cornell University as an instructor. In 1937 and 1938, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Folger-Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and for many years, the Folger-Shakespeare Library exhibited the model of the Globe Playhouse that Dr. Adams had designed based on his Ph.D. research. The Globe Playhouse model is now on exhibition in the Axinn Library.