Myles Brand
President of Indiana University
Live Web cast January 23, 2001 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT

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Myles Brand, the president of Indiana University since 1994, wears many hats, among them scholar, philosopher, educator, and administrator. During his tenure, he has won praise for his efforts to enrich IU's teaching and research traditions; make the university more effective and accountable; expand its international programs; and create partnerships with businesses and the government. More spectacularly, he made headlines last fall after firing Bob Knight, IU's controversial men's basketball coach.

Brand strongly supports IU's science programs. In his State of the University 2000 speech last October, he said that future priorities included a new science building on one IU campus and a new School of Informatics.

But the IU president, who began his career as a philosophy professor, warned that a narrow focus on these subjects should not lead to the neglect of the humanities. "Rather than being incompatible, science and technology and the arts and humanities nourish one another and call upon a common set of intellectual qualities and habits of mind," he said. "(P)rofessional education cannot stand alone, but must be complemented by exploration of the arts and humanities." In 1998, he had taken similar arguments before the U.S. House of Representatives during testimony on the National Endowment for the Humanities.

As president, Brand has worked to make the university a leader in information technology, forging an innovative agreement with Microsoft Corporation to provide IU faculty, students and staff with free access to the company's products. IU has also been named the lead U.S. institution in the TransPAC Consortia, a high-speed networking infrastructure for researchers in colleges and universities in the U.S. the Asia-Pacific Rim. In the last two years, the university has also been awarded two multi-million dollar grants for advanced research in pervasive computing, the increasingly powerful combination of high-speed computers and intelligent devices, and for genetic research.

Brand first taught at the University of Pittsburgh. In 1972, he became chair of the philosophy department at the University of Illinois-Chicago and succeeded in elevating the department's rank to among the top 10 in the nation. He did the same at the University of Arizona, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Dean of Arts and Sciences. At Ohio State University, he served as provost and vice president for academic affairs from 1986 to 1989, then moved on to become the president of the University of Oregon until 1994.

Brand is currently chair of the Indiana Conference on Higher Education, is a member of the board of the National Association of State and Land Grant Universities, and is outgoing chairman of the board of the American Association of Universities. He is married to Dr. Peg Brand, an artist and professor of philosophy and gender studies at IU. Brand is a father and a grandfather.

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