Former IU professor, famed Bob Knight critic hits lecture circuit

About 2,340 miles west of Bloomington, former IU English professor Murray Sperber has recreated his Herman B Wells Library 10th floor faculty study where he wrote four books, down to the pictures of San Francisco he tacked on the walls.\n"I often wonder why I have pictures of San Francisco," Sperber said, "when I can look out the window and it's right there."\nFive years after he spoke out against former IU men's basketball coach Bob Knight and a year and a half after his retirement from the IU faculty, Sperber has finally stepped out of the spotlight and settled into his new life, living in California, lecturing at universities across the country.\n"I have no sentimentality toward IU," Sperber said. "They were my employer. I miss my friends, but I don't miss my enemies."\nIn the spring of 2000, Sperber was interviewed for a CNN/Sports Illustrated investigative broadcast about Knight in which he voiced his concern about Knight's conduct as a member of the faculty at IU, specifically in the allegation that Knight choked former basketball player Neil Reed. Sperber was immediately thrown into a media frenzy and became a target Knight supporters viciously attacked. \n"It was bizarre," Sperber said. "What I mainly said was IU had very good rules about how faculty treat students. There were no rules at all for Bob Knight, and he made IU look ridiculous. The idea of a statement like that would get people so enraged is just bewildering." \nKnight fans were so enraged that Sperber received threats left on his voice mail such as, "If you don't shut up, we're going to shut you up," and "We figured out how to find you. We can look in the schedule for the fall," according to an Indiana Daily Student article from June 2000. As a result, Sperber took a year leave of absence from the University.\n"I have trouble making sense of it," he said. "I always knew fans of college sports were a little nuts, but the idea of sending threatening notes or death threats was just very weird."\nSperber's colleagues at the time, including Interim IU-Bloomington Chancellor Ken Gros Louis, said they supported him.\n"I thought that Murray said what he thought, and I respected him for that," Gros Louis said.\nEnglish professor Scott Sanders said Sperber simply voiced what many faculty members were thinking.\n"I fully supported Sperber's public statements, which expressed sentiments that many, many faculty members had felt for years," Sanders said. "I had long considered Knight to be a bullying, vindictive and vulgar man. He presented himself as a teacher, yet his behavior would never have been tolerated from any faculty member." \nSperber was more qualified to speak out about collegiate sports than many of his critics thought. A devoted sports fan, Sperber played semi-professional basketball in France for two years before he came to IU in 1971 and covered the North American Soccer League for Soccer America magazine in the 1980s.\n"I think people have a stereotype of college critics as pointy-headed professors," he said. "I played basketball at a high level. I worked as a sports reporter. I love sports."\nWhile Sperber said he lectures at colleges on a variety of issues, such as "Sports and ethics" and "College sports and the Catholic identity," often the schools want him to discuss his latest book, "Beer and Circus," published in 2004, which discusses how the undergraduate culture at many universities revolves around drinking and partying.\n"The national trend is now beer and circus," Sperber said. "IU never bucked the national trend."\nLike with sports, Sperber has inside knowledge of collegiate parties. As an undergraduate at Purdue University, he was a member of Tau Epsilon Phi, a fraternity he described as "a sort of 'Animal House.'" When the movie came out in 1978, he said he got phone calls from his fraternity brothers about how much the Delta house resembled their own.\nStill, Sperber is quick to point out that getting a good education at IU is definitely possible, but only if students know how to work the system and refuse to accept the party culture.\n"IU is still one of the best schools -- you just have to be aggressive," Sperber said. "I don't think it should be that hard. I think the school should work better for its students."\nBut working for students is a job that although he said he enjoyed, Sperber no longer has to worry about.\n"Once I retired, I realized immediately how much responsibility goes with teaching," Sperber said. "It's a whole world of responsibilities that's just not there for me anymore."\nSperber said he is content with his life in retirement, beginning each day by reading USA Today (because it has the best sports coverage), chauffeuring his 15-year-old daughter Logan and taking the time to catch up on all the leisure reading he didn't have time to do while he was teaching.\n"I have trouble envisioning Murray retired," said Paul Strohm, a former IU English professor who is now a professor of the humanities at Columbia University. Strohm met Sperber when they were graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. "But, because he is a lively minded guy, I'm sure he is up to plenty of interesting things. We're going to meet in Berkeley this winter and sit on the porch and indulge in old-guy reminiscences. Actually, neither of us has a porch. But you see what I mean."\nFor now Sperber's new office, decorated like his old one in Bloomington, is getting a workout as he begins to write a fifth book on the culture of the 1960s. It's also going to get a new look.\n"I know I have some photos of Chicago somewhere," he said. "I should put those up."\nAfter all, now San Francisco is right outside.