Boston University President emeritus John Silber, who will be given a lifetime achievement award from the New England Board of Higher Education on Friday, said yesterday at the State House he is most proud of his work at BU during his presidency.
The current BU chancellor and 1990 Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and taught at Yale University, was a controversial figure at BU during his presidency, which started in 1971.
“It is the real quality of BU that is my greatest satisfaction,” said Silber at a press conference announcing the award.
During his speech to a handful of people, Silber took credit for the increase in BU’s research funding from $12 million to $300 million during his presidency. He is also credited with boosting the university’s endowment and transforming BU from a commuter school into the fourth-largest private university in the country, attracting students from around the world.
The fact that many students accepted by BU decide to attend Ivy League schools reflects well on the university’s applicant pool, he said.
“The quality of students that come to BU is [historically] a crapshoot,” Silber told The Daily Free Press. “It turns on their luck in being accepted at other institutions.”
While president, Silber often found himself in the middle of controversy, drawing criticism from students and faculty who accused his views of being discriminatory, homophobic and sexist.
In 2003, he drew fire from students for saying students who are raped are responsible for what happened to them.
“If you want to stop rape, stop using the T,” Silber said at a student forum, according to a March 6, 2003 Free Press article. “Don’t wander around at night . . . no city is absolutely safe.”
In 2002, Silber was again criticized for ordering the BU Academy to drop its gay-straight alliance, according to a Sept. 23, 2002 Free Press article. Many students denounced his refusal to include sexual orientation into BU’s discrimination clause.
BU added “sexual orientation” to its non-discrimination clause Dec. 2, 2004, according to a letter sent the next day from then-president ad interim Aram Chobanian. In the letter to the BU community, Chobanian said the addition is not a “change of policy or practice, but rather a formal affirmation of our long-standing commitment to equality of opportunity at Boston University.”
Despite the controversies, Silber is also credited with attracting quality professors, but he said yesterday professors have become too expensive, saying they should teach more than one class as a way to lower costs at the school. Full professors’ salaries at BU rank among the top 10 percent of all Americans’ salaries, Silber said.
“Professors don’t want to teach,” he said. “If we had every teacher teaching at least two classes at BU, we could reduce tuition.
“It is the collapse of productivity in faculty that explains most of the increase in cost at BU,” he added.
Board of Higher Education president Evan Dobelle praised Silber’s contribution to UT’s racial integration initiatives and the partnership he created between BU and struggling Chelsea Public Schools in 1989, which still stands today.
“John Silber is one of the half-dozen-or-so leaders of higher education in the country’s history,” he said.
Dobelle also praised him for establishing the BU Academy and Prison Education Program, and eventually transforming the school from a commuter school to an internationally renowned institution.
Among Silber’s biggest regrets include a failed tuition advance fund he once proposed, which would have helped more students attend private institutions, he said. He also said a plan that would require all tuition money earned at public universities to go directly to the schools, instead of partially funding the state budget as it currently does, was never enacted.
“It’s important to know which of the balls you missed,” he said.
Reynolds Joseph, a member of local scholarship program Dollars for Scholars — the group founded by Irving Fradkin, an optometrist from Fall River who was announced at the same meeting as the recipient of a state merit award for his work building the program — said though many have taken issue with Silber’s policy decisions, he is “duly impressed” with Silber’s work throughout the years.
“I don’t understand why some of his ideas never came to fruition,” he said, “especially with [university] faculty and how they are paid so much and do so little.”
