IOP Unveils Eight Fellows for Spring Semester

A former governor, a State Department appointee, a federal judge, and a politics reporter are among eight individuals who have been named as the spring 2014 Institute of Politics resident and visiting fellows, the institute announced Thursday, Jan. 23.

The five resident fellows—which include Roll Call politics editor Shira T. Center; former Boston Police Department Commissioner Edward F. Davis; U.S. State Department representative to Muslim communities Farah Pandith; chairman of Mitt Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns Robert F. “Bob” White; and the senior judge for the Massachusetts U.S. District Court, Mark L. Wolf—will live on campus from Feb. 3 until the end of April.

The three visiting fellows for the semester are former governor of Arkansas Michael D. Huckabee, who will spend three days on campus, former U.S. Office of Personnel Management chief of staff Liz Montoya, and Israeli Farmer Federation President Avshalom Vilan. Both Montoya and Vilan will spend about half the semester at Harvard.

“It’s a great group, a very diverse group, maybe a little bit different than you might expect,” IOP Director C. M. Trey Grayson ’94 said in a phone interview. “We don’t have as many traditional political operatives.”

Grayson said some of the fellows come from backgrounds the IOP hasn’t hosted in some time. He said he wondered if, in its nearly fifty years of existence, the IOP has ever hosted a federal judge.

According to Grayson, Wolf, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1971 and has presided as the senior judge of U.S. District Court for Massachusetts since Jan. 1, 2013, will offer students a unique perspective on the judiciary.

“Given the number of students that are interested in going to law school at some point in their career after college, we thought it would be great to have [Wolf] talk about how he got there,” Grayson said.

Grayson also singled out Davis, who served as the Boston police commissioner at the time of the Boston Marathon bombings last spring, and White, who was a top adviser to Romney during his U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns and was one of the founders of the private equity firm Bain Capital.

In addition to auditing classes and attending IOP events, each of the resident fellows will teach a weekly study group open to the public, though Harvard undergraduate and graduate students are given seating preference.

Pandith, who will step down from her position at the State Department Jan. 31, said she plans to teach a class about Muslim youth.

“We’re going to be talking about issues of identity, of conflicting ideologies around the world, about how our country thinks about the growing issues around the diversity of communities around the world,” Pandith said.

“I want to be able to connect the ideas of what I’ve seen firsthand on the ground in the course of the decade that I’ve served in government with the young generation,” she said.

While most fellows leave their occupations and spend time at the IOP before returning to work, Grayson said that Center, who plans to teach a study group on women, the media, and politics, will still work part time for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, while a fellow.

“Roll Call is very supportive,” Center said in a phone interview. “It’s the midterm election year and Roll Call focuses on Congress, so I’ll be back to cover the edits and leader section for the rest of the campaign year.”

While living at Harvard, Grayson said the fellows will host office hours where students can hear stories about the fellows’ professional work and ask for career advice.

“[The fellows] are very much [a part] of an immersive campus, interacting with students and faculty,” Grayson said. “They are a great resource for students.”

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at mbernhard@college.harvard.edu.