Biography

President of the University of Oklahoma (1994-2018).

Governor of Oklahoma (1975-1979).

U.S. Senator from Oklahoma (1979-1994).

In 2016, Boren spearheaded a campaign in Oklahoma to adopt a 1 percent sales tax increase that would have raised about $550 million annually for public education, including pay raises for school teachers who were at the time among the lowest paid in the nation. But it was defeated in a statewide referendum.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Boren was having breakfast with George Tenet at a Washington hotel when Tenet, then CIA director, learned that an aircraft had flown into the World Trade Center tower in New York City. Boren later recalled that neither he nor Tenet was "totally shocked" by the terrorist attack because the two men had spoken frequently about the possibility of international terrorists launching an attack in the U.S.