Murray Levin - The "B.U. Five"

The "B.U. Five"

At Boston University, Levin was a close associate of Howard Zinn, whose office was located next to his in the political science department building. Both Levin, Zinn and fellow poli-sci faculty member Frances Fox Piven became part of the "B.U. Five" when they refused to cross union picket lines during a 1979 strike by clerical and custodial workers at the university and were targeted for retaliation by B.U. President John Silber. Silber had earlier rejected a labor contract already negotiated by the American Association of University Professors and the University, which forced the professors out on strike in the fall semester of 1979. The clerks and custodians soon followed. When the university settled with the AAUP, the vast majority of professors went back to work teaching, but Levin, Zinn, Piven and two others refused to cross the other unions' picket lines.

Levin and Zinn were two of the harshest critics of Silber's top-down "industrial" paradigm of university administration, in which Silber equated an institution of higher learning to a car factory. For their opposition, Silber had "merit" pay increases continually denied them. (Piven eventually left B.U. for a position at City University of New York.)