The Beasley School of Law’s rapidly expanding business-law curriculum received a substantial boost when Philadelphia business attorney and longtime Temple supporter Murray H. Shusterman, FOX ’33, LAW ’36, decided to underwrite the Shusterman Professorship in Transactional and Business Law with a $1.1 million gift.

Shusterman has practiced, taught and excelled in the field of business and real-estate law since graduating from the School of Law in 1936. This expression of Shusterman’s commitment to the school is only the most recent in a long list of contributions. “It is not an exaggeration to say that, without Murray Shusterman, Temple Law could not have achieved its current level of excellence,” School of Law Dean JoAnne Epps said. “His commitment and generosity have been an inspiration to all of us.”

For more than 70 years, Shusterman has been an integral part of Temple and Beasley. He began at Temple as an undergraduate, graduating with honors in 1933. He went on to become a member of the Law School’s first day-division class, where he edited the Temple Law Quarterly and graduated with honors in 1936.

Shusterman’s contributions to Beasley include many years as an adjunct professor teaching corporate and real-estate law. He also served as counsel of the Temple University Alumni Association, and as a member of both the Law School Board of Visitors and the Temple University Board of Trustees. 

In 1959, he joined with a determined group of Temple Law alumni to form the Temple University Law Foundation, the law school’s first major fundraising organization. Its initial endowment of $50,000 has grown to nearly $3 million.

And in 1994, Shusterman and his family made one of the largest gifts to the Law School at that time: $1 million toward the renovation of Park Hall. The restored building opened officially in 1997 as Murray H. Shusterman Hall.

“Lord Francis Bacon said three centuries ago, ‘I hold every man a debtor to his profession,’” Shusterman said. “Whatever progress I’ve made personally and professionally, I owe a large extent to the excellent education I received at Temple.”