Robert A. Dentler (November 26, 1928 – March 20, 2008) was an American sociologist who co-authored and oversaw the controversial court-ordered busing plan to desegregate Boston's public schools in the 1970s through the 1980s.
He was involved in the school desegregation plans for at least sixteen other northern American cities and the University of North Carolina system.
He and colleagues Richard Boardman and Bernard Mackler co-authored Desegregating the New York City Public Schools (1964), commonly known as the Allen Report.
In the 1980s, he advised desegregation efforts in the southern school districts of St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; Little Rock; Mobile, Alabama; and DeKalb County, Georgia.
In 1994, he served as the leading expert witness in the federal court case that led to the desegregation of schools in Rockford, Illinois.
The plan transformed the Boston schools over a decade marked by incidents of racial conflict and violence, often directed by working-class whites against black students.
Dentler was critical of Common Ground, J. Anthony Lucas's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book about the Boston busing crisis, saying "social and political demography as well as intergroup history get short shrift," saying the author wove a "complete fabric of exculpation out of the stuff of ... local legends.
Dentler was one of fifteen academic deans who led a revolt against Boston University President John Silber, who survived multiple "no-confidence" votes by trustees and faculty in the 1970s and 1980s.
Howard Dentler (1922-2013), a board member of the Heifer Foundation, was a pastor active in the liberal Christian denomination, Disciples of Christ, who began his ministerial career serving an African-American congregation in the 1950s.
In the final year of his life, he became the oldest student to enroll in the poetry-writing seminar taught by acclaimed Massachusetts poet Tom Daley, who eulogized Dentler at a memorial service held at First Parish Church in April 2008.