Carol Ruth Silver - Life and Career

Life and Career

Silver attended the University of Chicago, earning a bachelor's degree in 1960 and a law degree in 1964. She was a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Silver's 1977 election was part of a shift toward diversity on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; she was described as "the board's first unwed mother."

In 1985, after Bernhard Goetz shot and wounded four attackers on a New York subway train, Silver wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The legality of the actions of the 'subway vigilante' cannot be determined until all the facts are in. What is already clear is that the New York officials denouncing him misconceive the law of self-defense... A subway rider attacked by armed criminals has every right to shoot in self-defense... Rational gun control is a necessity. But New York City's long history of prohibiting ordinary, responsible adults the only realistic means of self-defense is not rational."

She served three terms, through 1989. Silver ran in the Democratic primary for California's 1st congressional district, in 1996, but lost to Michela Alioto (who then lost to incumbent Frank Riggs). Silver ran in the 2000 District 6 supervisorial race, coming in fourth.

Silver then retired from politics and continued her philanthropic work, which had included founding San Francisco's Chinese-American International School in 1982, the first and most modeled Mandarin Chinese immersion program in the United States. In the summer of 2002 she traveled to Afghanistan to explore ways that American citizens could extend a hand of friendship to the Afghan people, and she has founded or co-founded three organizations dedicated in different ways to supporting and promoting education in Afghanistan, particularly of women and girls.

She is the principal in Law Offices of Carol Ruth Silver, in San Francisco, California, and a real estate broker. In 2007 she was appointed Director of the San Francisco Sheriff's Office of Prisoner Legal Services.