Family, Education and Early Academic Career
Silber was born in San Antonio, Texas, the second son of Paul George Silber, an immigrant architect from Germany, and Jewell (née Joslin) Silber, a Texas-born elementary school teacher. His father's architectural practice collapsed during the Great Depression. His parents were Presbyterians (Silber later discovered that his father was of Jewish ancestry).
At Trinity University in San Antonio, Silber double-majored in fine arts and philosophy. In the fall of 1943, as a freshman at Trinity, he met a sophomore named Kathryn Underwood, daughter of farmers from Normanna, Texas. The couple were engaged in January 1946 and married on July 12, 1947. Silber graduated summa cum laude from Trinity in June 1947 and married Miss Underwood on July 12, 1947, shortly after graduation. They had eight children, one son and six daughters by birth and one son by adoption. Their first-born son and daughter were born before 1955. Five more daughters were born over the next eleven years. Their first-born son, David Silber, died of AIDS at age 41 at their home in December 1994.
Silber received his M.A. in 1952 and worked first as a teaching assistant and then as an instructor while pursuing a doctoral degree. Peter H. Hare, Philosophy Professor Emeritus, at SUNY State University of New York at Buffalo remembers Silber as a teaching assistant at Yale in the mid-1950s while Hare was still an undergraduate. Hare wrote, "George Schrader was the lecturer in the introductory course where John Silber was the TA leading my discussion section. Silber, a rabid Kantian, was the person with whom I had my first heated philosophical arguments as an adult."
Silber's first faculty job was at University of Texas at Austin (UT) where he chaired the Philosophy department from 1962–1967. Larry Hickman, Director, Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale recalls his time as a student in philosophy at UT. "The department chairs during those years, John Silber and Irwin C. Lieb, were busy using Texas oil money to collect the very best faculty and graduate students they could find."
While at UT Silber founded the Texas society to abolish capital punishment.
In 1967, Silber became Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UT. Three years later, in a widely publicized firing, Silber was removed as Dean in 1970 by the UT Regents Chairman Frank Craig Erwin, Jr.
Silber was named president of Boston University on December 17, 1970. He took office the following month.
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