Silber was often labeled “conservative.” In fact, and as he always insisted, he was a liberal of the old school. He believed in advancement according to merit, not quotas; colorblind justice; the disinterested pursuit of truth; and open debate, not ideological conformity. This commitment to what we might call classical liberalism — the liberalism of an Edmund Burke or John Stuart Mill — forms an important leitmotif of “Seeking the North Star.” It also explains why Silber was from the beginning on a collision course with the faux-liberalism, the illiberal liberalism, of contemporary academic culture. “No institution,” he writes sadly, “has contributed so extensively to the deracination and diminishment of our humanity as university faculties.”
— Roger Kimball, “John Silber on Modern Academe”
I hadn’t heard of him. But I’ve got a lot of time for a guy who comes down like a ton of bricks on a “Gay Rights” organization when his own son has died of AIDS.
The fact of the matter is that the term “liberal” has become a cover for “radical”–either Marxist such as Howard Zinn (with whom Silber was in constant conflict), or one of its spinoffs such as feminism, “multiculturalism”, and perversionism (the LGBT agenda).