Harvard's Mister Nice Guy

I first heard of Drew Hansen when I was a sophomore in high school. I was a mere novice debater in the podunk town of Puyallup, Wash., but Drew was a big-city whiz tearing up the local championship debate circuit from up north. Everyone knew who Drew was -- the fastest mouth in the Northwest.

Celebrity followed Hansen to Harvard. Here everyone knows him, but for different reasons.

Some know him for his leadership in First-year Urban Program (FUP), where he participated and spent three years as a leader.

Many know him as a bass in the Harvard Glee Club, in which he earned a coveted spot as a first-year.

Some know him form various public service activities, Most recently, he has been an organizer of Partners for Empowering Neighborhoods (PEN), an area literacy program.

Still, others met him through Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Impact, where he took part in Bible studies and was part of the group's leadership team. Just last month, Hansen represented the group in an Emerson Hall debate, defending the proposition that God does, in fact, exist.

Also through HRCI, Hansen Coordinated Faith And Service together (FAST), the group's arm for social justice.

While Hansen's public service in various forms may be why so many people know him, they don't always realize the motivation for his service. Like Phillips Brooks, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston a Century ago, Hansen's commitment to social justice grows from deeply held convictions about the nature of love for one's fellow human beings.

Faith and Service Together

Hansen is at first reluctant to talk about his faith on the record. He has done it before--for the Seattle newspapers after he was named a Rhodes Scholar, for example--and thinks he came off sounding trite and simplistic.

But when the thoughtful senior does speak of his faith, sharing his compassion for those in need and offering a guarded critique of elements whose commitment to service is weaker, he is anything but shallow.

"The faith is the only thing that matters," Hansen says. "There have been plenty of moments in the past four years when Christianity has looked extraordinarily improbable. But I can't honestly look at myself and say it's not true."

Hansen switches briefly to debater mode, citing historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ, defending the integrity of New Testament manuscripts, and quoting C.S. Lewis, one of his favorite authors. But then he slows down and turns to discussing God as a balance between "authority and friend."

"I know from personal experience that God is much more like a person than like a law or a set of rules," he says.

While some have tried to separate their faith from their activities, Hansen says he has tried to do just the opposite.

"Either your whole life is Christian and you submit it to God, or none of your life is Christian and you refuse to submit it to Him," Hansen says. He describes life as a gradual process of "taking out 'Do Not Enter' signs that stand between Him and you."

Social justice is one area where Hansen feels particularly called--and where he wishes more Christians felt the same.

"You have the American Christian problem of not being involved in social justice movements. In the United States, Christianity and social justice tend to keep little company together. In other countries this isn't so. In America in other time periods, this wasn't so. And you have a very, very clear biblical command to defend the poor..."

In FAST, Hansen has coordinated student involvement in a Dorchester tutoring program, work in local homeless shelters, and restoration of inner-city churches and other buildings used for community outreach.

According to Hansen's views, the group is aptly named. He believes that faith and service are truly inseparable. As a result of that conviction, he is sometimes critical of the "religious right"--Christians who support policies that Hansen believes hurt the poor.

"The command to do just and to defend the rights of the poor is repeated so often in the Bible, it is a continual wonder to me how the religious right manages to ignore it," says Hansen.

If a label is necessary, Hansen would rather be known as a leader of the "religious left," believers who may be conservative theologically, but who don't embrace the agenda of the American right. Hansen is quick to affirm the faith of, say, members of the Christian Coalition, but he rejects their political viewpoint as contrary to his understanding of what the Old and New Testaments teach.

From memory, he recites a lengthy passage from the 58th chapter of Isaiah, which has served as a rallying cry for FAST: "Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

While he recognizes that conservatives may be trying to meet the needs of the poor in other ways, he still questions their position, pointing not only to their actions but also to their words.

"The biblical injunction to do justice for the poor is so absent from the rhetoric of the religious right," Hansen says. "Very rarely will they volunteer the rhetoric of compassion to support their programs. Instead, they offer the rhetoric of a broken system."

The subject of law and social justice is dear to Hansen's heart: his Hoopes-winning social studies thesis was on the evolution of Massachusetts child welfare law from 1635 to 1935, with application to the current welfare debate.

He's so Nice!

But as serious as he may be about his faith, somber contemplation is not what comes to mind when most people think of Hansen. Instead, there is one word that occurs to nearly everyone: Nice. Drew is nice. Incredibly nice. Perhaps the nicest person at Harvard. It's his dominant characteristic.

As one roommate told me just after Hansen won the Rhodes: "It restores my faith in these things. He really deserves it. He's just so nice."

From Sewell Chan '98, a member of Hansen's FUP group this year and a Crimson editor: "Oh! I love Drew Hansen! He's so nice!"

From the director of his Children's choir back home in Mercer Island, Wash., as quoted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Everyone liked him. He was so sweet and brilliant."

Besides being one of the most likable Harvard students, he may also be one of the easiest to impersonate. Here's how to do it:

First, say hello to pretty much everyone you meet, because everyone knows Drew. During a 45-minute interview in an uncrowded courtyard, nearly a dozen people interrupted to greet the affable Hansen.

Second, speak so quickly no one could possibly understand everything you are saying. Hansen honed his speed-talking skills in his debating days, where he and his partner eventually took third place at the National Forensic league tournament. To this day, listeners are amazed by the rapidity of his thought and speech.

And of course, affect the trademark Hansen mannerism, one Drew shares with sister Janna J. Hansen '97: clenched fists raised to ear level and shaken while emitting a high-pitched "woo-hoo."

Much of the rest of Hansen's behavior betrays his Seattle-area roots. For one thing, he can be found at nearly any time at the Harvard Square Coffee Connection. While Hansen estimates he made three trips a week to the crowded beverage business, sources say he can be found there nearly every night.

And Hansen himself says that during the final weeks of his thesis, he would spend three or more hours a day nursing his medium mug of black coffee through the full temperature spectrum.

(Hansen acknowledges that the Seattle-based Starbucks would be a more natural hangout for the Northwesterner, but he says Coffee Connection was too ingrained in his system by the time the larger chain opened its Boston Locations).

But his affection for caffeinated concoctions is not the only giveaway of his Seattle heritage; he also is an irrepressible Supersonics Fan. "They broke my heart again," he said after the Lakers handed the team its second straight early exit from the playoffs.

While the city may not be able to provide big wins on the court, it has provided Hansen with all the attention he could want. Both of Seattle's daily newspaper's featured Hansen in front-page stories last December. One included plaudits from Hansen's children's choir director, high school humanities teacher and debate coach.

Hansen will study Christian ethics next fall at Oxford, strolling the same courtyards that Lewis once strolled. There he will wrestle not only with the immediate question of his own future--he has considered ministry, politics and law as possible careers--but also eternal questions of truth.