Tom, Mike and I went down to the Kick off of the Spring 04 Harvard Fellows program. Interesting group overall, but the show was stolen by Jesse Ventura. They are all running weekly study groups [schedule and topics]
A few sessions that look particularly interesting...
Ventura is bringing in Richard Marchinko. Described by Ventura as one of the toughest men in America.
"So Richard is a shooter" staring out at a silent audience... "who knows what a shooter is?" again, more uncomfortable intellectual silence..."A shooter is the guy on the ground, the front line on the war on terror... the guy who would actually take Bin Laden out" Marchinko will be in on Tuesday March 16th from 4:00-5:30 in the Lowell House JCR. Most of Ventura's sessions will be on third party politics.
Gary Flowers, vice president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, will be running, what he described to me as a session with a technology policy focus on March 9th. I'll update this post when I hear back from him with more details.
Lynn Sweet, Editorial Page Editor at the Chicago-Sun Times seems like a bright, fiery woman. She promised to bring in Bob Novack, who published the Valerie Plame leak.
John Sununu, Bush I's Chief of Staff, will run a study group on what its really like to work in the White House.
Steve Jarding, Democratic political consultant, seems like a very interesting character who will bring in a lot of top democratic movers and shakers. He's trying to get Joe Trippi and James Carville, among others. These sessions will be about the down and dirty aspects of American political maneuvering.
Don't miss Mike's comments.
I agree with Mike and Adam that Jesse Ventura stole the show - both before and after the event. I particularly enjoyed it when he commented that both the Democrats and Republicans lack credibility. He seemed to direct the comment to Secretary Glickman and Mayor Ashe (staunch Democrat and Republican, respectively).
One of the things I learned last night is that the Study Groups events are open to the public. "Study group" is not the sort of thing I normally think of as being open to the public. I am hoping that we can get some posts about future sessions.
One event I would add to those my colleagues listed is the Reverend Jesse Jackson next Tuesday (February 17) with Gary Flowers.
Posted by: Tom | February 12, 2004 at 04:33 PM