Historical revisionism, AKA lying about the past, seems to
be a popular sport these days. Consider The New York
Times. “All the news that’s fit to print” says its famous
motto. But is what our paper of record prints really news,
i.e., things that actually happened? Take the recent
article about John Silber, the former president of Boston
University. The Times regularly ran hostile pieces about
Mr. Silber when he was president of B.U., and they
continued the practice throughout his years as Chancellor of
the university and, now, as president emeritus. After all, Mr.
Silber had the temerity to take a moribund, near-bankrupt
institution and transform it into a thriving
university. He vastly raised intellectual standards,
among professors as well as students. Unforgivably, he insisted that the
primary purpose of a university was
not to pursue an antinomian, counter-
cultural agenda but
to educate students.

Absent Mr. Silber’s active involvement in the affairs of
B.U., the university has been slipping quietly back to
sclerotic mediocrity and adherence to politically correct
platitudes. So it is no surprise that the current university
administration has been furiously distancing itself from Mr.
Silber and his legacy of excellence. The latest evidence of
this was in a May 10 story in the Times.
“Boston U. Gave Ex-Chief $6.1 Million, Officials Disclose”
screamed the headline. The story began thus:
“Officials at Boston University disclosed yesterday that the institution’s
long-term president and chancellor, John R. Silber,
collected $6.1 million last year, two years after he stepped
down as leader. The money includes $3.3 million in deferred
compensation from the 32 years that Dr. Silber worked at the
university.” Gosh. Sounds odd, doesn’t it?
Why should a university “give” its ex-president $6.1
million? The long article is a tissue of insinuations, ending, as is de rigueur these days, with a
reference to Enron, just in case you missed the fishy aroma.

Mr. Silber was quick to correct the record, though as of this
writing the Times has not deigned to publish his
correction. Here are a few highlights from his response:
“The University made no—zero—contribution to my deferred
compensation. That fund was created entirely from my salary
that I deferred; it was simply my personal savings account.”
So the university didn’t “give” the money, after all;
Mr. Silber earned it and was prudent enough to save it.
Towards the end of the article, the Times quotes
Alan Leventhal, the Chairman of the B.U.’s Board of
Trustees, who pontificated that while John Silber was paid
handsomely, “we are in a new era today” and “the University has
tightened its procedures for determining fair executive
compensation.” Oh, really? After thirty years, the Trustees
of B.U. raised Mr. Silber’s salary to $770,000—a tidy
sum, no doubt. But Robert Brown, the new president, stepped
in on day one to a salary of $780,000. How’s that
for tightened procedures?

We don’t begrudge President Brown the money, by the way:
we simply note
the double standard. “I did
not take the presidency of Boston University for
the perks,” Mr. Silber noted in his response to the piece in
the Times, “but for the opportunity to transform an
institution.” We look at what Mr. Silber did for Boston
University and recall that old bit of folk wisdom: “No good deed goes
unpunished.”