Radio Host Finds Home at HLS

Christopher Lydon, who resigned as host of the famous Boston public radio program "Connection" over a contract dispute, has found a new home at Harvard Law School (HLS).

Lydon accepted an offer from Weld Professor of Law Charles R. Nesson '60 for space in the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at HLS.

The Berkman Center, which is currently providing Lydon and his staff with telephones and

computers, is home to many of Harvard's leading cyberspace experts, and conducts research on issues ranging from Internet privacy rights to academic uses of the Web.

Lydon says he has been friends with Nesson, the faculty director of the Berkman Center, for many years, and they have both been interested in Internet issues.

"[Nesson] said, 'Why don't you come over here, and think about what we think about all the time?'" Lydon says. "We puzzle about a lot of the same things."

Nesson says the Berkman Center had been interested in studying possibilities for online discussion software, a subject that also interested Lydon, who recently began broadcasting the "Connection"-a show that interviews its guests on cultural and political issues, among others-on the Web.

"When he went on the loose, we were interested in having him do a study group with Berkman Center students," Nesson says. "He's been scrambling around doing one thing or another trying to keep himself alive."

Since it is too late in the year to start a formal study group, Lydon does not occupy a formal position at the center, though Nesson says Lydon interacts with Berkman students informally. Students discuss with Lydon both subjects he deals with on his show and Internet and technology issues, according to Nesson.

"We look at it as a quid pro quo," he says.

The Past and the Future

Lydon's departure from WBUR, which produces "Connection," caused a stir in Boston. The former Boston mayoral candidate launched "Connection" in 1994 and the show's ratings have since skyrocketed. Originally intended as a local, Boston program, the show's success led it to go national in 1997.

WBUR claims that in July 2000, Lydon wanted to make "Connection" into a for-profit venture in which he and his partner, Mary McGrath, would have an equity stake, a wish WBUR was unwilling to grant.

"WBUR felt that this proposal was incompatible with the station's mandate as a non-profit institution and incompatible with its reliance on individual contributions for half its financial support," the management said in a statement at the time.

WBUR also offered Lydon a salary raise to $330,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to keep him at the station.

Lydon developed a devoted following for the show in Boston, and its supporters praise his insightfulness and intellect.

"He's a very good person and a very bright guy," says Henry J. Steiner, director of the law school's human rights program.

But Lydon has been faced criticism from listeners who claimed that he was arrogant in demanding a larger salary and thus severing his ties with WBUR.

Lydon says he is currently unsure of his future, although he wants to stay in public radio.

"[The show is] a public radio entity more than commercial, although we don't rule out that possibility," he says.

Lydon speculates that the Web will play an important role in the continuation of his show, and says that modern life is increasingly geared toward the Internet.

"Broadcasters like us can take one conversation way past a network of stations to an instant

world-wide audience," Lydon says.

"We feel [that using the Web is] a radically bigger opportunity than we have ever had before."

Working at HLS

Lydon, according to his new colleagues at the Berkman Center, has been active in contributing to the intellectual environment of the center, although he is not teaching any courses.

Eric Saltzman,, executive director of the Berkman Center, says Lydon is helping the Center launch a website about law and technology issues. For the site's debut, Lydon will discuss the contents of the site in his online broadcast.

Saltzman also says Lydon is helping the Center with it research on "distance learning," a subject which Lydon has discussed on "Connection."

Dan Markel `95, a research associate at the Berkman Center who works near Lydon, says Lydon uses the space at the Berkman Center to produce his show, which is broadcast on the web at another location. He says the opportunity for people at the Center to interact with Lydon is a mutually beneficial arrangement.

"We get good [public relations] from him and he gets resources and interesting people to work with," Markel says.

And though Markel says that Lydon has not had much interaction with law school students outside the Center, he says the interaction with Berkman affiliates has been productive.

"We have a workspace designed for serendipitous innovation," he says. "The hope here is that if you can gather interesting people together, interesting ideas will come out."

Law school spokesperson Michael A. Armini says that Lydon's workspace at the Berkman Center is just an informal arrangement...it's not a commercial venture."

Steiner says there is nothing unusual about HLS visitors who do not officially contribute to the school.

"They can be activists, scholars, they can come from all different walks of life and they spend time here reading, thinking and writing," he says. "We have a lot of people at the school who are neither teachers, students [nor] staff."

The Berkman Center is just happy to have Lydon there, Saltzman says, and if Lydon is making a few phone calls to ensure that his broadcasts continue, they don't mind.

"If he were selling widgets using our name, I wouldn't be happy, but that's not the case," Saltzman says.

--Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.