Education: The Ivory Tower Triggerman

In a new book, B.U.'s president takes aim at U.S. education

Few people are neutral about John Silber. After 18 stormy years as president of Boston University, Silber, 63, continues to delight admirers and enrage critics with his outspoken conservative views and hard-nosed leadership style. George Washington University president Stephen Trachtenberg, who worked under Silber at B.U., calls him "one of the most distinctive and seminal voices in American higher education today." Freda Rebelsky Camp, head of the B.U. chapter of the American Association of University Professors, says he runs a "sleazy, fascist regime" and dismisses his acknowledged intelligence as irrelevant: "First-rate minds can be lunatics, like Ezra Pound. It doesn't mean...

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