Seeking the North Star

Book excerpt: f you lived and worked in Boston at any point during the last half century, you were aware of a force emanating from an increasingly influential institution on the banks of the Charles River; the institution was Boston University and the force behind it was John Silber. From his induction in 1971 until his retirement in 2011, Silber was unrelenting in improving the standards and quality of his university. What he may have lacked in tact, he more than made up for in intellectual brilliance, wide-ranging vision, and stubborn advocacy. A professor of philosophy, celebrated for his work on Immanuel Kant, Silber was a humanist in the tradition of Jefferson, Holmes, Whitehead, and Barzun.