Memorial Service for John R. Silber November 29
A memorial service for John R. Silber (Hon.’95), Boston University president emeritus and former chancellor, will be held Thursday, November 29, at 3 p.m. in the George Sherman Union Metcalf Ballroom. Silber died September 27 at age 86.
As BU’s seventh president, Silber led the University’s transformation from a commuter school to a renowned research institution. He served as president from 1971 to 1996, when he became University chancellor, a position he held until 2003. Silber also was a College of Arts & Sciences professor of philosophy and of international relations, a University Professor, and a School of Law professor of law.
During his tenure at BU—which coincided, for a time, with his unsuccessful 1990 run for governor of Massachusetts—Silber greatly expanded the campus, recruited top-notch faculty, and established the University’s long-running partnership with the Chelsea Public School system, which began in 1988 and continued for 20 years. The University he served for so long awarded him an honorary degree at the 1995 Commencement.
The memorial service on November 29 will include a remembrance by Vartan Gregorian, the former president of the New York Public Library and Brown University, now president of the Carnegie Corporation, who was a BU trustee from 1976 to 1989, when he was made an honorary trustee for life, as well as video remembrances by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger (Hon.’99)—Silber served on the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (known as the Kissinger Commission)—and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74), the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, whom Silber brought to BU more than three decades ago.
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