Dentler, Robert A. 1928-2008 (Robert Arnold Dentler)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 26, 1928, in Chicago (some sources cite nearby Oak Park), IL; died of bone marrow cancer, March 27, 2008, in Cambridge, MA. Sociologist, educator, and author. Dentler taught sociology at colleges and universities throughout the northern United States for more than fifty years. He was a professor and dean of education at Boston University in 1974 when he was assigned the task for which he is most often remembered—implementing the desegregation of the Boston public school system. It was a controversial and painful process, accompanied by riots and other violence, and the struggle lasted for more than ten years before the U.S. District Court judge who had seized control of the schools determined that the job was done. Dentler and a colleague, Marvin B. Scott, were responsible for every minute detail of the transformation, from planning the operation to implementing more than 400 related court orders. In their memoir of those years, Schools on Trial: An Inside Account of the Boston Desegregation Case (1981), Dentler and Scott declared the desegregation a technical success, but acknowledged that true integration remained elusive. Dentler left the university in 1979 and participated in the desegregation of several other schools from Connecticut to Missouri, in part as a sociologist with Abt Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He returned to teaching at the Boston Harbor campus of the University of Massachusetts in 1983, retiring in 2007. In the same year Dentler received the distinguished career award of the American Sociological Association. Dentler wrote more than a dozen books in his career, including Urban R's: Race Relations as the Problem in Urban Education (1967), Urban Problems: Perspectives and Solutions (1977), Hosting Newcomers: Structuring Educational Opportunities for Immigrant Children (1997), and Practicing Sociology: Selected Fields (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dentler, Robert A., and Marvin B. Scott, Schools on Trial: An Inside Account of the Boston Desegregation Case, Abt Books (Cambridge, MA), 1981.

PERIODICALS

New York Times, April 6, 2008, p. A26.