Word: silbering
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...forehead glistening with beads of sweat, John R. Silber is hotly defending his record as president of Boston University [B.U.] before a crowded press conference. His face is ashen and his teeth are gritted, but his voice never breaks as he makes point after point in firm, measured tones. As he pauses for emphasis, a student heckler interrupts to ask a pointed question. Silber whips his head around and shuts the student up with an ice-cold stare and a reminder that it is he, Silber, who is holding the press conference. Then, without losing pace, Silber plunges back into...
...John Silber is never one to back down in a confrontation. Cool, brilliant, and articulate, he fires verbal salvos with wilting accuracy--he once described faculty activists as "coffee house unionists" and reminded a student union president of his "pimples...
...Silber is fighting hard to win his biggest confrontation yet. Next month he will preside over a faculty assembly that will debate a resolution calling for his dismissal. Twenty-five professors are active in a committee working to oust him, and the student forum of the college of liberal arts voted recently to demand that he be fired. Six-hundred professors from M I T, Harvard, and other Boston-area universities have signed a petition calling for Silber's removal and have pledged to withhold administrative courtesies--such as advice on promotions--from B.U. as long as he is president...
...Silber's opponents charge that his dictatorial actions have turned B.U. into a place "more like Iran under the Shah or Chile under the Junta than like an institution of higher learning," in the words of one critic. They charge him with using tenure, promotions, and salaries to punish his opponents on the faculty in a systematic effort to stamp out dissent. They accuse him of censoring student publications and the student radio station. Most recently, they protest his effort to fire or suspend five of his staunchest critics on the faculty for teaching classes off-campus or making them...
...course, Silber's administration is not without its achievements. His organizational skills and reputation for academic brilliance initially gave B.U. a facelift and injected it with new credibility. But the authoritarian atmosphere at B.U. has overridden these gains and the tension and turmoil have at times made a shambles of the educational process. The extraordinary situation at B.U. can be repaired only under a new president. We urge the B.U. trustees to listen to the university's student body and faculty and dismiss John Silber...