Biography of President Howard R. Swearer
“We want Brown to be a community of compassionate people, involved in serious intellectual pursuits, but never divorced from one of the principal purposes of education, to prepare young people for responsible citizenship.”
– Howard R. Swearer, Fifteenth President of Brown University
President Howard R. Swearer was a modest man who led Brown University with a deep and broad vision. He was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, on March 13, 1932, attended public school in Wichita, and graduated from Princeton in 1954. He earned his both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard. After teaching at UCLA, directing Peace Corps training for Africa and Latin America, and working for the international division of the Ford Foundation, Howard Swearer assumed the presidency of Carleton College. In August 1976 he became the fifteenth president of Brown University.
During President Swearer’s administration, Brown went through a period of unprecedented growth. Numerous building projects were completed and the curriculum expanded. He recognized the importance of building bridges and connections between the university and the outside world, and created programs and centers on education reform, public policy, world hunger, U.S.-Soviet relations, and the internationalization of the curriculum. President Swearer was a co-founder of Campus Compact, a national coalition of college and university presidents advocating the notion of public service as central to the mission of higher education.
On the week of his 55th birthday, President Swearer presided over the inauguration of the Center for Public Service at Brown. Remarking on the occasion and the mission of the Center, he said, “Revitalizing America … will require that each of us affirms our personal responsibility for serving the community in which we make our lives.”
After taking stock of his career later that year, President Swearer decided that after more than a decade at Brown it was time to move on. He left the presidency in December 1998.
On October 19, 1991, after a courageous battled with cancer, Howard Swearer died. He is remembered fondly for his youthful energy, his optimism and good spirit, his wondrous sense of humor, and his low-key and quiet strength.
In 1992, the Center for Public Service was dedicated in his name as the Howard R. Swearer Center for Public Service. Reading remarks prepared for the dedication, Senator John Chafee stated on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “Howard believed that an undergraduate education should include learning the practices of others.” And, by establishing the Center for Public Service in 1987 and forming Campus Compact, Howard helped renew an ethic of public service in students at Brown and at universities across the country.”