Slive was a scholar of Dutch art, specifically of the artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jacob van Ruisdael.
He served in the United States Navy Reserve during World War II, starting in his junior year of college, and was on active duty in the Pacific Theater from 1942 to 1946.
In 1960, was the first American professor to lecture in Russia under a Cold War exchange agreement.
[2] He was appointed chair of the Department of Fine Arts in 1968, remaining in the post until 1971.
[3] A Festschrift containing 69 essays by his students was compiled and presented in his honor on his seventy-fifth birthday in 1995.