[2] After receiving his PhD from Yale, Silber became professor of philosophy and served as dean of the University of Texas's College of Arts and Sciences (1967–70).
[7] In the fall of 1943, as a freshman at Trinity, he met a sophomore named Kathryn Underwood, daughter of farmers from Normanna, Texas.
Hare wrote, "George Schrader was the lecturer in the introductory course where John Silber was the TA leading my discussion section.
"[12] In 1959, Silber earned a Fulbright scholarship, which enabled him to travel to West Germany to teach at the University of Bonn for a year.
Larry Hickman, Director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, recalls his time as a student in philosophy at UT.
"The department chairs during those years, John Silber and Irwin C. Lieb, were busy using Texas oil money to collect the very best faculty and graduate students they could find.
Among Silber's recruits to the Boston University faculty were the author Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel, writer and concentration camp survivor.
Under Silber, Boston University increased in size but questions about his leadership style caused divisions among faculty and alumni.
According to Perspectives Online, the publication of the American Historical Association, "at a time when the BU president (Silber) was running roughshod over faculty rights, Fritz Ringer bravely and vigorously championed the principles of academic freedom.
In 1978, a Federal court decided in favor of the AAUP position, and Boston University was forced to negotiate with the faculty union.
[23] In 1987, Federal courts ruled that faculty in the local AAUP chapter were "managerial" employees and therefore could not engage in collective bargaining with Boston University.
[9][25] In 2002, Silber ordered that the Boston University Academy, a prep school operated by BU, disband its gay–straight alliance, a student club that staged demonstrations to publicize the detrimental effects of homophobia.
His outsider status, as well as his outspoken and combative persona, were at first viewed as advantages during a year in which voters were disenchanted with the Democratic Party establishment.
He questioned saving the lives of terminally ill elderly people, quoting Shakespeare and saying "when you've had a long life and you're ripe, then it's time to go."
Silber also stated that the feminist Gloria Steinem, the black Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and white supremacists are "the kind of people I wouldn't appoint as judges.
Ultimately, Weld was able to hold on to a significant portion of the Republican base while appealing to large numbers of Democrats and left-of-center independents, enabling him to defeat Silber by four points.
Straight Shooting: What's Wrong with America and How to Fix It (Harper & Row, 1989), Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art (Quantuck Lane, 2007), Kant's Ethics: The Good, Freedom, and the Will (DeGruyter, 2012) and Seeking the North Star (David R. Godine, Publisher, 2013).
He is critical of architects Josep Lluís Sert, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Steven Holl.
At a memorial service on November 29, 2012, writer Tom Wolfe spoke to the 750 people who gathered, saying that Silber was a man who "couldn't bring himself to flatter.