John R. Silber

John Robert Silber was born in San Antonio in 1926. The seventh president of Boston University, he was, in addition, the first chairman of the Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment, a leader in the racial integration of the University of Texas, a member of the founding committee of Project Head Start, a member of President Reagan's Bipartisan Committee on Central America, the 1990 Democratic nominee for Governor of Massachusetts, and Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education. His books include Straight Shooting: What's Wrong with America and How to Fix It, Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art, and Kant's Ethics.