Trying To Take the Politics Out of the Institute

This afternoon eager first-years will flock to the first open house of the year for Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP).

They’ll come to the IOP for the chance to meet political celebrities—who last year included both Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as Kofi Annan.

They’ll come hoping to make a name for themselves in a place known as a hotbed for self-avowed political junkies.

“The IOP is really good at showing the glamorous side of politics,” says Sonia H. Kastner ’03, an officer of the IOP and president of the Harvard College Democrats. “Politics can be very sophisticated...It’s not all just knocking on doors.”

But as first-years join as organization that has welcomed presidents and kings and was created to honor American political prince John F. Kennedy ’40, they may not find as much exclusivity as classes of aspiring politicians before them.

After an overhaul of the IOP student leadership imposed two years ago ushered in a year of turmoil followed by a year of adjustment, some see the IOP’s leadership quietly moving away from the high-powered image often associated with its core membership.

In November 2000, then-director David H. Pryor left vocally angry students in his wake when he disbanded the IOP’s self-selecting Student Advisory Committee (SAC) and instituted open elections for the student governing board.

But now, after a year of getting used to the new structure, the changes Pryor instituted by fiat are almost universally praised as creating a more friendly institute—and students are trying to continue this trend and correct problems within the IOP that Pryor could not.

Large and In Charge

The multi-faceted IOP offers a number of programs, including large forums with famous speakers, small study groups where students discuss current events with IOP fellows—politicians, pundits and others who have chosen to spend a semester at Harvard—and a program where students teach civics in public high schools.

But the services the IOP provides to Harvard students with a casual interest in politics were never a source of intense controversy.

Rather, it is the institutionalized hierarchy of students who have official positions at the IOP that maintains a lingering reputation for insularity.

This year, students want to dispel the perception that the IOP inner circle is a clique of over-ambitious would-be senators, both by reaching out to other student groups and by focusing more programs on substantive political debate.

When Pryor, a former Democratic senator from Arkansas, disbanded SAC in November 2000, he called for “a new day at the Institute of Politics,” saying that the SAC’s tradition of appointing its own successors was “not what democracy is.”

Others at the time spoke of power struggles within SAC and between students and the IOP’s professional staff, a division only exacerbated when the restructuring came without initial student input.

Chairs of the institute’s program committees are now elected by the IOP’s full membership for half-year terms, while its president and vice-president are chosen for a full year.

While sophomores and first-years now remember only the new system, many members of the revamped SAC say they want the campus to see the club as home to those more interested in the substance of politics than in pressing the flesh.

“A lot of people even today still say, ‘Oh, the IOP’s very political,’” says SAC member Previn Warren ’04. “They say it in a pejorative way.”

“I think sometimes there’s a tendency to perceive it as closed,” says Ilan T. Graff ’05, who was elected to SAC last year as a freshman at-large member. “But once people step through the doors, they get the opportunity to see that the students are open.”

To remedy the image problem, students at the institute say they will focus on outreach this year, beginning by footing the bill for campus political groups to campaign in New Hampshire.

“[Our] future direction is to be a tool and to have other organizations come to us and partner with us so we can be more a mainstream part of undergraduate extracurricular life,” says Elizabeth G. Frieze ’04, chair of the IOP civics program, which works with the Phillips Brooks House Association.

Warren says the institute will need to make adjustments to internal structure as well as external relationships to combat negative perceptions.

The organization’s large size and sprawling network of committees has daunted newcomers and earned it notoriety as a “leadership ladder,” Warren says.

Former Secretary of Agriculture Daniel R. Glickman, who replaced Pryor as IOP director this summer, says he hopes to appeal to students in groups that will maintain identities separate from the IOP.

“We’re going to have a very engaged outreach effort this year,” Glickman says.

SAC members acknowledge that the IOP’s vast size and labyrinthine network of resources obligate them to make that effort.

“It’s a challenge to reverse the trend of having just people who are political junkies,” says Graff. “The IOP has the potential to be a place for all types of people, which gives us a tough responsibility.”

Where’s the Party At?

The IOP’s purpose as a non-partisan organization is cited by students both within and without SAC as an integral part of its philosophy, but one which provides a challenge.

Students note that SAC election results have little or nothing to do with the candidates’ political beliefs, but rather on experience, devotion and plans for the future.

SAC President E. Clarke Tucker ’03 adds that while there are more Democrats than Republicans on SAC, this simply reflects the school’s makeup as a whole.

Tucker says the IOP’s non-partisan mission makes it unique compared to political groups on other campuses.

“I felt I could be a part of the College Dems at any college in the country,” he says. “There’s really no other institution at any other college that compares to the IOP.”

Michael B. Firestone ’05, who is the campaign chair for the College Democrats, calls the IOP “a good space, where kids who are interested in government can get together and hang out, regardless of affiliation.”

“The College Democrats aren’t really interested in having Republicans at their events, and vice-versa,” Firestone adds.

But non-partisanship has its costs.

Though the IOP makes an effort to recruit politically and ethnically diverse speakers and fellows, Firestone says the carefully maintained neutrality can make speeches and discussions less “fiery.”

“It can stifle some more controversial issues,” Firestone says.

He notes that political figures speaking at the forum often veer from controversial topics to talk about political involvement in general.

For instance, former defense secretary Bill Cohen spoke yesterday at the ARCO Forum (see related story, page 3). Instead of addressing the packed crowd on the timely and contentious issue of military intervention in Iraq, he spoke on the topic of “Public Service in the Aftermath of 9/11.”

While members say that the IOP’s reluctance to take sides on issues can be frustrating, Kastner says the campus has room for both the IOP’s intellectual side and the Democrats and Republicans’ activist sides.

“Together, they make a complete package,” she says. “The IOP helps frame the issues for you, helps you decide.”

But the IOP’s efforts to beef up issue discussion this year may complicate efforts to walk the line of neutrality.

Warren says that whether policy groups created last spring to discuss and produce a brief on a specific political debate “can remain non-partisan is yet to be seen.”

From Sweat to Substance

IOP regulars say that these policy groups will not only fill a hole in the institute’s array of programs, but will also help to alleviate complaints that the IOP makes students do too much grunt work.

They say incoming students are sometimes frustrated with spending too much time on organization and not enough on discourse.

Students on one of the IOP’s many committees—for instance, the ARCO Forum committee—may spend the bulk of their time planning events.

One former study groups liaison says he will not continue with the IOP this year because of the preponderance of “grunt work.”

“I didn’t really feel like I got much out of it,” he says. “They mentioned at the beginning of the year that they had a big problem with people dropping out at the end of their freshman and sophomore years, but they didn’t do anything to combat it.”

IOP leaders agree that the work can be tedious.

“They’re all good activities for the campus,” Warren says, “but it can become almost secretarial. The politics can get underplayed.”

The former liaison says he enjoyed attending the study groups, but not organizing them.

With the policy groups, the IOP hopes to create more cohesion between the issues students are interested in and the events they plan.

“The first thing they’re hit with is a discussion about Social Security or the draft,” Warren says of the initiative to create policy groups. “Then, logically, they can go set up events so anyone else can come. Right now we’re missing that first door.”

Learning to Cooperate

While students say the IOP’s 15 professional staffers, who help plan logistics and recruit speakers, are good resources, their existence creates a unique situation at Harvard—an undergraduate student group that is controlled by adults.

Tucker and others characterize relations between the professional staff and students as working “beautifully” right now.

Graff says that while the staffers have “contacts and resources beyond the pale of our abilities” they nevertheless “foster student initiative with their suggestions.”

The former study groups liaison, however, says he felt that while the staffers were both friendly and helpful, their presence curtailed student input.

“Supposedly you make decisions about next year’s study groups, but really it’s just the people who work at the IOP who determine the fellows,” he says. “ I wouldn’t consider it a student-run organization.”

Shoshana M. Lew ’05 says that while the staffers connected students with otherwise unreachable speakers during her work on the IOP’s civics committee, their presence also “limits the extent to which students, particularly those who are only becoming involved in the IOP, can get a foothold in the organization’s leadership structure.”

Ganesh N. Sitaraman ’04, a member of SAC who is also a Crimson editor, says that the process of selecting fellows is open to students from interviewing stages and onwards, and that it is more effective to have the staff handling more of the logistics.

While Pryor’s unilateral SAC reorganization highlighted the fundamental lack of authority facing student leaders of a University-controlled organization, Tucker says that one of the major improvements that followed Pryor’s reforms was the move to institutionalize student input in the IOP.

A steering committee that includes three students and three staffers—including Glickman—now oversees many aspects of the institute.

“No action like that Sen. Pryor took could be taken without steering committee input,” Tucker says.

The selection of Glickman as director, which came last April, saw more undergraduate input than ever before, Tucker adds.

No More Revolution

Warren says the changes in the works will come slowly but surely after a year in which the IOP was still “cleaning up and moving forward.”

“Nobody really wants another quasi-revolution,” he says. “People don’t want to be dramatic about it.”

Former SAC president Robert F. McCarthy ’02, who was the first president elected under the new system, and is now working for the Democratic Party in New Hampshire, says the IOP sets high standards for itself and is constantly trying to meet them.

“In our generation politics is not cool,” he says. “So to get students, especially Harvard ones, to commit themselves to public service is a lofty goal.”

And Glickman is enthusiastic about meeting that goal this year, by finding a place where “the interface of politics with policy” attracts students who like both the style and the substance of politics.

“We have a responsibility to reach out continuously,” he says. “If we do that we’ll have a really good year.”

—Staff writer Sarah M. Seltzer can be reached sseltzer@fas.harvard.edu

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached theodore@fas.harvard.edu.