| David Adamany was the eighth president of Wayne State University. He was vice president of academic affairs at the University of Maryland prior to his appointment as president in 1982. Adamany became Wayne State University's longest serving President.
 Adamany envisioned Wayne State University as one of America's premier research institutions as well as a leading urban university. He reorganized the university and created three new colleges: College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs, School of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, and the College of Science. In 1993, Adamany launched the largest building program in the university's history. He realized one of his major goals in 1994 when Wayne State University and 87 other universities were designated "Research I" universities by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Adamany was a forceful president and he did encounter opposition to his decisions. There was lengthy faculty strike in 1988, and in 1989, he faced an eleven-day student protest against racism at the university. Adamany peacefully negotiated an agreement with the students to expand the university's Center for Black Studies into the Department of Africana Studies.
Adamany retired and became a faculty member of Wayne State University's College of Law in 1997. His legacy as president is remembered in the university's new David Adamany Undergraduate Library and in Wayne State University's ranking as one of America's leading research universities.
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