He was the co-editor of multiple editions of Robert's Rules of Order and served as the second president of California State University, Northridge from 1969 to 1992.
[2] Immediately before Cleary arrived on campus in 1969, the presidential suite had been destroyed by an arsonist,[4] and the acting president along with his staff had been held against their will by protesters in the administration building amid racial turmoil.
[6] Roy Wilkins of the NAACP wrote a personal letter to Cleary protesting the campus disciplinary actions, given that almost all of the accused students were African American.
[6] Toward the end of his time at CSUN in 1991, Cleary followed the lead of the CSUN Faculty Senate and rejected a proposed campus regulation that would have prohibited discriminatory speech against gays and ethnic minorities, despite advocacy of the measure by student leaders and the campus affirmative action coordinator.
"[1] At the time of his retirement in 1992, Cleary had grown the university to 30,000 students and had increased the number of degree programs by 50 percent.