John Silber: A university president who wasn't run by the faculty.

Wall Street Journal ^ | September 27, 2012

[iowamark]

John R. Silber, who died Thursday, was the William Tecumseh Sherman of the culture wars. Given the job in 1971 of reforming Boston University, Silber took few prisoners and won his corner of the war. He stayed the course and personally rebuilt Boston University into a jewel of academia...

The rest is well-known history because in his march to revive an academic center in the liberal northeast, Silber became a national lightning rod in the controversies over what came to be called "political correctness." John Silber was not politically correct. And he didn't much care who that upset. He liked to argue that he was the true liberal. A Yale-trained philosopher whose specialty was Immanuel Kant, Silber demanded intellectual rigor and excellence from everyone around him, even, to their shock, tenured faculty.

Enraged students and faculty called him a dictator. As recently as 1994, the campus's International Socialist Club was protesting "John Silber's repression of students, faculty and staff on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation and progressive political views." To their credit, the university's trustees stood by him and his goals, itself a rarity.

It's doubtful any university president today could duplicate Silber's run from 1971 to 1996, with a leave in 1990 to run unsuccessfully for Massachusetts governor as a Democrat, losing to Republican William Weld. John Silber rebuilt the school's physical plant, greatly enlarged its endowment and research grants, and gave students and their parents that increasingly rare thing in higher education today—their money's worth.

[iowamark]

One of the last conservative and Christian Democrats.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I remember when he was profiled on 60 Minutes. He got rougher treatment than Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il ever did.

[Salvey]

I recall that in one of his books (Straight Shooting?) Silber showed, amusingly, that if certain demographic growth trends continued, by the year xxxx, every man, woman and child in the USA would be a lawyer.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I remember when he complained that generous welfare benefits were a magnet that drew people from tropical climates to the frozen weather of New England. That had libtards foaming at the mouth even though it was 100% true.

[DuncanWaring]

If I recall correctly, back in the early ‘80s when it became necessary for male students to show proof of Selective Service registration to get federal taxpayer-funded financial aid, all the libs went ballistic and some of the big-name schools announced they would increase school-funded financial aid to compensate for that lost by non-registrants.

Silber was asked if BU would be doing the same.

His response was to the effect of “Not only No, but Hell No!”.

[Calvin Locke]

I remember that 60 Minutes piece too.

I did get a masters from BU at night. Money's worth? Well, in the roughly 3.5 years or so, tuition per a course went up about $500, around a 25% increase from when I started.

From what I remember at the time, BU was something like the 4th largest private school in the US, the second with the international students enrolled (one prof said Silber was very good at marketing the school in foreign countries, while another was peeved at the level of English proficiency of some, slowing down his teaching).

I voted for Silber in the gubernatorial primary. His opponent, the "establishment" Dem, had me washing my eyes from slime just looking at him.

I ended up for Weld in the general.