Our colleague Bob Farb announced his retirement on the blog yesterday. He worked for the School of Government for 41 years, interacted with every group of public officials imaginable, and was highly productive and widely respected. This post remembers Bob’s career. I came to the School of Government just after Bob entered phased retirement. I interacted with him through email, occasionally by phone, and in person every year or so when he would visit Chapel Hill. He was always helpful and kind, and scrupulously refrained from criticizing the things I did that likely seemed foolish to him. I got a sense of the regard in which he was held when I received the evaluation results from the first legal update I did for prosecutors. I thought that the session had gone well enough, but most of comments were along the lines of “please bring Farb back.” Even today, there are many prosecutors, judges, and others who would like nothing better than to bring Bob back. Among those who know Bob best are the faculty members who worked with him for years here in Chapel Hill. I’ve collected some of their reflections below. Jim Drennan, an approximate contemporary of Bob’s, said this: Bob Farb is the kind of colleague everyone would want to have. He is amazingly competent and knowledgeable—“what does Farb say?” has been a constant question that judges, advocates and law enforcements officials have been asking for decades. He is also a consummate team player. I worked with him for [...]
Faculty Coordinators
