Seeking the North Star: Selected Speeches
John R. Silber
David R. Godine, Publisher (2014)

“Discontent combined with youthful idealism and energy for action ensures a brighter future.” John Silber

This volume consists of 30 of John Silber’s speeches that he selected from more than 200, dating from 1971 until 2012. (Declining health prevented him from presenting the last, “The Choices Are Ours,” to the Algonquin Club and Boston Consular Corps.) Who was he and why is he significant?

Briefly, Silber was born in San Antonio (August 15, 1926), the second son of Paul George Silber, an immigrant architect from Germany, and Jewell Silber, a Texas-born elementary school teacher. Both of his parents were Presbyterians. As an adult, he learned that his father’s side of the family was Jewish and that his aunt had been killed at Auschwitz. His father had never said anything about it. After teaching at Yale, Silber returned to Texas, where he joined the department of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. After serving as chairman of his department he became Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He was the first chairman of the Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment and a leader in the integration of the University of Texas. Silber was a leading spokesman for the maintenance of high academic standards and gained national attention for his advocacy of a rational, comprehensive system for financing higher education. He was also instrumental in founding Operation Head Start.

In January 1971 Silber became the seventh president of Boston University, and in 1996 he became Chancellor. In January 1996, Governor William Weld chose him to head the Massachusetts Board of Education, the state’s policy-making board for public education below the collegiate level. Silber wrote widely on philosophy (especially on Immanuel Kant), education, and social and foreign policy. He died on September 27, 2012.

However, in my opinion, the best instruction to his special significance is provided by a careful reading of the material provided in this volume. His was a singular voice, as these brief excerpts clearly indicate. My selections are from hundreds of candidates among the passages of greatest interest and value to me. Of course, obviously, each is best appreciated in context.

o “If we re-order time to celebrate youth and age and the gradual metamorphosis from one to the other, if we regain our sense of time and value our present differences in the recognition that each of us plays all the parts in sequence, we shall see that there is no salvation for the young or the old at the expense of the either. Our fulfillment depends on collaboration in a time that is well ordered.” From “The Pollution of Time” (May 1971) when Silber presented his inaugural address to Boston College.

o “The present age in America and in most of the West is perhaps best described as an age if bewilderment: it is marked by a pervasive sense of loss, alienation, and indirection. In every age and in every society, men and women have know personal tragedy; many generations have witnessed the destruction of family, social class, or nation…In the span of our lives, change has been even more rapid and pervasive. Consequently, although we have not yet experienced general destruction and ruin — despite our Syracusan misadventure in Vietnam — we have suffered nevertheless a serious loss of meaning and direction.” From “The Tremble Factor” (1974) when Silber spoke at the Colorado College during its centennial celebration.

Note: This is a theme that Silber explores time and again, one he quoted from several of William Butler Yeats’s poems such as “The Second Coming” and “The Great Day.”

o “Authority and civil order depend in significant measure on the consent of the governed. The more civilized and enlightened the country, the greater its dependence on the voluntary respect for standards that cannot be enforced by law…We face a crisis of spirit. Its resolution far transcends the power of the state; it is too important, too far-reaching, to be resolved by mere governmental action. Rather, it lies within the grasp of each of us. When we deter mine to govern ourselves — when each is obedient to the unenforceable — we shall have regained control over ourselves and thus regained as a nation our capacity for self-government…The crisis that will confront graduating classes for years to come lies not in the state or in the stars, but in ourselves. The future of our country, our future happiness and that of our children depends decisively on whether we as individuals and as a people practice obedience to the unenforceable.” From “Obedience to the Unenforceable” (1995), Silber’s commencement address at Boston University.

o “The reform of education does not turn on money but rather on how it is spent. We should recruit excellent teachers by doubling their salaries…Do we care more about the welfare of our children than for the educational establishment, the privileges of teachers’ unions and the schools of education? If so, our highest priority will be to provide our children with better teachers. Common sense makes obvious what needs to be done. The question is, do we have the will to do it? By our passivity we, the parents and taxpayers, are in the final analysis the most important obstacle to educational reform. We could improve our schools if we tried.” From “Roadblocks to Education Reform” (1999), a summary of his observations (and frustrations) while serving as chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education.

o “One of the great surprises in life is the discovery of one’s true self — the fulfilled person he or she can one day become…Why not tale a shot at the best that is in you? None of us can be greater than what we believe ourselves to be. With the gift of life, we have been given a share in the greatness of our species. No matter how modest our abilities may be, each of us can add to the richness of life and to the joy and fulfillment of the lives of others by partaking in the surprises that inevitably attend us when we strive.” From “Life Is a Series of Surprises” (2004) when Silber “felt honored to address” the “dedicated and hardworking” graduates Lackawanna College, “individuals who had earned their degrees despite disadvantages that would have deterred many others.”

In his review of Seeking the North Star for The Wall Street Journal, Roger Kimball observes, “Silber’s understanding of the importance of the humanities as a leaven for what is noblest in our aspirations sets him apart from the usual technocratic university president, who is more of a fund-raising apparatchik than an intellectual leader. He understood that the index of civilization was a society’s commitment to what the early 20th-century British jurist John Fletcher Moulton called ‘obedience to the unenforceable.’ Civilized life takes place mostly in a realm between the coercive law and complete freedom–a realm governed by such flexible imperatives as taste, manners and custom. More and more, the extent of that gracious dominion has been diminished. It’s an odd situation we face.”

The last two excerpts from the book that I wish to share now are from “The Choices Are Ours.” As mentioned previously, this was a speech that Silber was unable to deliver because of rapidly declining health. I have selected them to serve as a conclusion to my brief comments about the book because, in my opinion, they express the essence of John Silber’s humanity as well as his exceptional intellect and social awareness. Here they are:

“Greed has now infected all parts of our government; a growing relativism erodes our moral sense, which has gradually been replaced by unreflective partisanship and ideological rigidity. But we are not at the end of our greatness.”

And then:

“If we were ever to lose discontent with the present and the idealistic demand for a better future, we would lose hope and forfeit all chance for a better life. Our existence and our fulfillment depend upon a knowledge of our history, on what has made us great, on the knowledge which nourishes our capacity not only to hope for a better world but also to believe it possible and to make the sacrifices necessary for its realization.”

* * *

I have a somewhat unorthodox suggestion to make: After reading this review and others, and when you begin to read this book, read all or most of the 30 speeches first before you read the superb Foreword by Tom Wolfe and equally superb Introduction by Edwin Delattre. I wish I had. Why? Because, in fairness to John Silber, I think his thoughts and feelings about various subjects should be shared as he expressed them, at full strength, without filters.