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Remembering Myles Brand as the man who fired Bob Knight would be a great disservice to the memory of a distinguished academic leader.
The former Indiana University president, who died Wednesday following a battle with pancreatic cancer, did much more than confront a mercurial basketball coach. His legacy to the state is a first-rate university system that strengthens Indiana’s economic, intellectual and cultural well-being.
As president of IU from 1994 to 2002, Brand oversaw tremendous growth in enrollment and in positioning the university and state for major roles in the life sciences and information technology. During his tenure, IU established the nation’s first School of Informatics, doubled research grants and secured the largest single private gift in the university’s history.
Philosophy was his academic specialty, but Brand was a deft financial administrator. He helped to ensure IU’s stability, quadrupling the size of its endowment and tripling the number of endowed chairs. He helped land the largest private gift in the school’s history, a $105 million grant for the Indiana Genomics Initiative from the Lilly Endowment. He developed the Central Indiana Life Sciences Initiative and oversaw the merger of University and Methodist hospitals in Indianapolis into Clarian Health Partners, now recognized annually among the best hospitals in America in U.S. News & World Report.
The university also made great strides in embracing diversity.
“Myles Brand was an extraordinary visionary, who understood better than any higher education leader I know the confluence between excellence and diversity,” said Charlie Nelms, IU’s first vice president for diversity and now the chancellor at North Carolina Central University. “He understood that excellence and diversity are part of the same fabric and that you cannot have one without the other. He walked the talk.”
It’s not possible to say where IU would be today without Brand’s leadership, but it’s clear how he positioned the university to grow to its record enrollment of 107,000-plus and left no doubt that the state’s institutions of higher education are a key to Indiana’s prosperity. His legacy is a university system that serves not just its alumni, but all Hoosiers.
