[10][14] However, San Fernando Valley advocates persuaded state officials to change the location to Northridge after a meeting at the Brown Derby restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard.

[15] The official groundbreaking of the university occurred on January 4, 1956, and was performed by, among others, the Governor of California Goodwin Knight and Los Angeles State College President Howard S.

[14] On October 25, 1960, then vice presidential nominee Lyndon B. Johnson visited the campus accompanied by Governor Pat Brown to hold a rally in front of approximately 3,500 students.

[14] While some attending students were holding banners in support of his opponents, Johnson used the opportunity to criticize the opposing Republican Party and their candidate Richard Nixon.

[18] In December 1965, with increasing conversation and tension on the topic of civil rights in the country, the university hosted a debate on the subject between conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. and liberal African American journalist Louis Lomax.

[14] The campus's quiet, moderately conservative and overwhelmingly white suburban setting did not shield it from a share of the noise, strife and social upheavals of the Vietnam War era.

[14] On March 25, 1968, a presidential primary campaign speech on campus by Robert F. Kennedy drew an orderly crowd of 10,000 and mainly focused on his opposition to the Vietnam War.

On November 4, the assault of an African American student athlete by his white coach on the CSUN campus led a group of African American students to hold the acting college president and more than 30 staff members hostage in the Administration Building for several hours, pressing demands for greater outreach in minority enrollment and employment and the establishment of minority studies departments.

[25][26][27][28] Despite an assurance of amnesty, 28 of the students involved were later charged with kidnapping, assault, conspiracy, and false imprisonment,[10][29][30] according to scholar Martha Biondi "the most serious crimes ever in the history of campus protest.

[36] Additionally, the Newport Pop Festival was held at the Devonshire Downs, now CSUN's North Campus, in June 1969 and attracted 200,000 attendees to watch performances by Jimi Hendrix, Ike & Tina Turner, Marvin Gaye, Jethro Tull and various others.

[10] In 1981, the campus officially established a foreign exchange student program with Japan, China, Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and the Netherlands.

[46][17] Various corporations like Amazon Alexa, Autodesk, Ernst & Young, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, KPMG and NASA also provided support to the university.

[51] The university saw major revenue losses as a result of the pandemic and announced a budget cut in August 2020, despite receiving the 7th largest amount in the nation from the first wave of Covid relief funds under the CARES Act.

On June 15, 2021, the university announced it had received a donation of $40 million from MacKenzie Scott and her husband Dan Jewett; the largest gift from a single donor in its history.

The public–private partnership was made possible by political support from various state politicians, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Alex Padilla,[59] as well as an initial donation of $1 million from Autodesk for a feasibility study.

The college develops and offers study opportunities which are designed to ensure that the individuals, communities and organizations served by the university achieve their lifelong learning goals.

[88] It is also a co-founder and partner institution of the Research Center for Translational Applications of Nanoscale Multiferroic Systems (TANMS), which was established at UCLA through an $18.5 million NSF grant in 2012.

[94] The satellite was launched on 18 April 2017 as part of the ELaNa 17 mission by NASA on the Cygnus CRS OA-7 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to the ISS.

Support services such as sign language interpreters, real-time captioners, and notetakers are coordinated from this center, as well as serving as a location of academic advisement and gathering of deaf students.

[154] Because of its proximity to Hollywood and its diverse array of modern architecture, the campus has long been an attractive filming location for motion picture and television productions.

It has appeared in American Idol, Arrested Development, Ringer, Chuck, Dexter, My Name Is Earl, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, Commander in Chief, Van Wilder, Six Feet Under, The Karate Kid, The Bionic Woman, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, McMillan & Wife, Son in Law, Bring It On: Fight to the Finish, Legally Blonde 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Roswell, The Nick Cannon Show, Quincy, M.E., Georgia Rule, and Sky High (in which the Oviatt Library is prominently featured).

Following the filming of The Good Place, an NBC TV show that is a comedy fiction series created by Michael Schur, various cast members, including Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, were spotted at CSUN.

[169] The CSUN Esports Club currently hosts several teams for a variety of competitive video games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, Valorant, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

[177] This has resulted in a variety of performances throughout the years, with headliners like Jimmy Eat World, Common, Ne-Yo, Ludacris, Diplo, Afrojack, Laidback Luke, DVBBS, Big Sean, Tyga, Dillon Francis, Louis the Child, and ASAP Ferg.

[183] In 2012, the program obtained recognition from the White House, winning Popular Choice award in First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move video challenge.

[185] In politics, three former faculty and staff members have become high-ranking officials in foreign countries, including Mohamed Morsi who became the 5th President of Egypt in 2012, as well as Mohammad Qayoumi and Prakash Chandra Lohani.

At the national level, CSUN has been home to two former heads of the United States Census Bureau (Roy Peel and Vincent Barabba), a former Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Kathleen Utgoff), the Program Executive Officer of the Joint Strike Fighter program (Lt Gen Christopher Bogdan), and a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (Jerry Jordan), as well as the Ambassador to the Bahamas (Nicole Avant), an Ambassador to Mexico (Julian Nava), Governor of Hawaii (Linda Lingle), and Lieutenant Governor of California (Mike Curb).

[190] In 2013, alumnus Stan Polovets was one of the key players in the $55 billion sale of TNK-BP to Rosneft, one of largest mergers ever to occur in the energy sector, due to his role as CEO for the Alfa Group Consortium.

The award-winners include Paula Abdul, John Densmore (as drummer of The Doors), Michelle DeYoung, Daryl Dragon (as part of Captain & Tennille), Richard Dreyfuss, Jenna Elfman, Mike Elizondo, Gordon Goodwin, Don Hahn, Phil Hartman, Cheech Marin, Brian A. Miller, Andy Summers (as guitarist of The Police), Serj Tankian (as frontman of System of a Down), and Diane Warren.

Actresses Alyson Hannigan and Eva Longoria also graduated from CSUN and received People's Choice Awards for their roles in How I Met Your Mother and Desperate Housewives, respectively.