Graham To Come To IOP As Fellow

Former U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential aspirant Bob Graham will spend the next academic year in the Spartan confines of Mather House, serving as a fall fellow at the Institute of Politics (IOP) and, in the spring, as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The slate of seven IOP resident fellows, announced Tuesday, also includes the chief political correspondent for The New York Times; a former Texas congressman; the former head of a prominent lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights group; and top advisers to past Clinton and Bush campaigns. Resident fellows must lead weekly study groups open to any Harvard undergraduate. By contrast, IOP fall visiting fellows—not yet announced—only spend part of the semester at Harvard, giving periodic talks related to their interests.

In addition to his IOP duties, Graham said Wednesday that he will study the organizational structure of the Kennedy School with the aim of opening “Graham Centers for Public Service” at the University of Florida and the University of Miami in 2006. The institutions would grant bachelors and masters degrees in public administration.

Graham said he also intended to brush up on Latin American history while at Harvard—and complete a book on politics aimed at high-schoolers that he has already outlined.

“I am distressed at the fact that many students get to the point of [high school] graduation without much practical knowledge” of how to work for change in the government, Graham said.

Graham, a 1962 graduate of Harvard Law School, is a native of Florida, where he was a two-term governor and three-term U.S. Senator before campaigning—unsuccessfully—for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential race. His previous book, “Intelligence Matters,” was critical of the Bush administration’s Middle East policy.

Although Graham said he hadn’t determined the focus of his weekly IOP study group, he suggested it might follow the main themes of the book he is writing.

‘ALL THE STARS’

The other new IOP fellows, none a stranger to Washington politics, also plan to use their study groups to address facets of political change in the U.S. Adam Nagourney, a political correspondent whose byline has appeared in The New York Times more than 1,000 times in the past 10 years—including on articles covering Graham’s presidential ambitions—said that his study group would examine the challenges both Republicans and Democrats face in preparing for the 2008 presidential election.

Nagourney, who wrote most recently in The Times about Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts ’76, projected that the upcoming election will be “the first genuinely open presidential race in 50 years.”

“Politics have become so extended in this country [that] basically this is the only year” that a break from reporting would be feasible, said Nagourney, who intends to cover the next presidential campaign for The Times.

“A lot of times, politicians...tend to end up at Harvard right after they’re done,” he said. “For me, it’s different.”

Cheryl Jacques, another fall IOP fellow, said she plans to be active in the 2008 election cycle, which starts as soon as the 2006 Congressional midterm elections are completed.

She is a past president and executive director of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy group.

Jacques, who previously held a 10-year tenure as a Massachusetts state senator from Needham, resigned from the HRC in late 2004 after the organization failed to stop 11 states from banning same-sex marriage. The HRC’s board of directors cited a “difference in management philosophy” in explaining Jacques’ resignation.

“I think the fact that gay marriage is a dominant social and political issue in this country is something that we will talk about,” Jacques said of her IOP study group.

A fourth fall fellow, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said he plans to examine in his study group similar cultural and political territory from a conservative perspective, trying to understand “why the country has become so much more Republican and conservative,” he said.

Ginsberg is a Washington, D.C. lawyer who worked as the Bush reelection campaign’s top outside counsel. He resigned abruptly in August 2004 after the Bush campaign learned he had advised Swift Boat Veterans for Truth—a group that made questionable claims against the Vietnam War record of Sen. John F. Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent.

Ginsberg, who describes himself as a one-time liberal who later “morphed into a conservative Republican,” said his past experiences speaking at Harvard have always been intellectually rewarding.

“I have my assumptions and presumptions challenged,” he said.

Joining Ginsberg, Graham, Jacques, and Nagourney as IOP fellows this fall are Martin Frost, a former Texas congressman who lost to Howard Dean earlier this year in a bid to chair the Democratic National Committee; Joseph Gaylord, a former counselor to Newt Gingrich (and Ginsberg’s first political boss, Ginsberg said); and Lisa Davis, a former advisor to Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.

All candidates for IOP fellowships must apply to a student committee that interviews applicants and makes recommendations to the IOP’s director, according to Kevin P. Kiley ’07, the student committee’s chair.

Recent IOP resident fellows have included such luminaries as former Minnesota governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Benjamin C. Bradlee ’43, managing editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate fracas. The IOP has also invited several members of Congress through its fellowship program.

Kiley called this fall’s roster “an exceptionally talented, distinguished and diverse group.”

The IOP’s director, Jeanne Shaheen, who technically has the final say on selecting fellows, said that most of the fellows had already been selected by the time she became head of the IOP on July 1, as a permanent successor to former IOP director Dan Glickman. Shaheen, a former New Hampshire governor and Kerry campaign chair was a 2003 IOP fellow herself.

“We got all the stars we were hoping to get,” Shaheen said.

—Staff writer Brendan R. Linn can be reached at blinn@fas.harvard.edu.