Jesse Ventura: Ex-wrestler, governor shakes up K-School

After enduring months of partisan mudslinging and an intense beating from the media, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura needed a vacation.

Instead of catching a plane to the Bahamas, the former wrestler-turned-politician grew a beard and packed his bags for Camp Harvard, where he taught seminars, talked policy with late-night partygoers and wrestled Lecturer on the Study of Religion Brian C.W. Palmer ’85 to the floor of the Leverett Dining Hall.

“I’ve often described the trip to Harvard like rehab,” Ventura says in a phone interview from his home state. “It’s like a drug addict being able to go to the Betty Ford Clinic.”

Working as a fellow for the Institute of Politics (IOP), Ventura immersed himself in the Harvard community, attending classes, lecturing at an Expository Writing section and hosting weekly study groups in the Lowell Junior Common Room.

Now, having returned home to Minnesota, Ventura looks back at his months at Harvard with complete satisfaction.

“I never really had a college experience,” he says. “When I graduated high school, I went right into the U.S. Navy. After that, I just went to junior college on the G.I. Bill and I was living at home.”

When an offer from the IOP came in the mail last December, Ventura says he didn’t have to think twice about accepting.

“In light of the changes in my life, I had the opening to do it,” he says. “I needed to get out of Minnesota. I needed a break from here, to go to a different part of the country and really rejuvenate myself.”

After finishing his time as a Navy SEAL, he spent 11 years grappling for the World Wrestling Federation as his alter ego, Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

In 1984, Ventura became an actor—with a leading role in the movie Predator, among others—and before long, he had his own radio and television talk shows.

His political career began in 1990, when he was elected mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minn., and in 1998 he became the first Reform Party candidate to win the gubernatorial race in the state. He’s been coaching high school football since the end of his term in 2002.

Now, the menus at Bartley’s Burger Cottage list him as “Harvard’s newest professor” after Ventura insisted the owners add him to their list of sandwich celebrities. With his fellowship behind him, the jack-of-all-trades can add yet another occupation to his eclectic résumé.

“The thing we were most impressed by is this idea that you can come from a life that is very much not a traditional pathway to politics,” says Ryan D. Rippel ’04, one of six student liaisons from the IOP who worked directly under Ventura. “He was not going to be a career politician. He was someone who felt the need for his leadership, so he stepped up to the plate and ran.”

A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW

Despite his celebrity status, Ventura spent his days at Harvard living in an unassuming apartment building across the Charles River and working from his office at the Kennedy School of Government, where he prepared for his seminars, held 16 office hours a week and learned how to use a computer.

Ventura hosted seven high-profile study groups, with topics ranging from the two-party system to the parallels between professional wrestling and politics.

The study groups consistently attracted hundreds of students, many of whom had never been involved in the IOP before.

“He was hands-down the most visible IOP fellow,” says Jordan L. Hylden ’06, another one of Ventura’s IOP liaisons. “He really wanted to get his hands dirty and have a total Harvard experience.”

When he wasn’t cross-dressing for a guest appearance in the Hasty Pudding’s annual production, Ventura was taking his politics to the street.

“We took him up to Currier House one night and there were all these kids coming out of parties waiting for the shuttle,” Rippel says. “He spent an hour and a half just standing out in front, debating with them about things like American policy towards Cuba.”

Such off-the-cuff interactions were common for Ventura, who spent every minute of free time combing the campus for conversation and getting involved in categorically unpolitical Harvard activities.

“I’d eaten dinner over in one of the dorms and we were walking over to the Spee club, and we ran into a bunch of the jocks out on the street having fun on the campus,” Ventura says, “and we got into quite a hectic debate over the war in Iraq. I did not support the invasion of Iraq...I think I caught them a little off-guard because I come off as a macho, tough guy.”

Ventura says he thinks differently about politics and makes a point of calling himself a statesman, not a politician.

“To me, a politician is someone who makes a career out of getting elected,” he says. “I don’t like them, because I think they’re the problem, not the solution. The moment they make a career out of getting elected, they’re no longer in public service, but in self-service. How can someone who’s been elected for 30 years know what’s going on in the private sector, if they don’t live it?”

One might call his retreat to Harvard a dip into the academic contingent, then—a checkup on a population that has traditionally been less than supportive of his “common sense approach” to politics.

Back in March, Ventura told The Crimson that there had been some resistance to his arrival because some people at Harvard had questioned his academic qualifications.

“My answer to them is simple,” he said at the time. “How many of them have ever run a state?”

OUT OF THE RING

Ventura’s reputation as a loud, imposing personality certainly preceded him when he arrived at Harvard’s gates. But those students who worked closest with him say they were shocked at how gentle he turned out to be.

“He gets a certain stereotype, a certain image that’s often associated with him,” Rippel says. “Meeting him in person, I found him to be a terrifically warm and friendly and caring guy, which isn’t something that always comes across.”

Ventura attributes the contradiction to his own doing, referring to his days as a performer on the wrestling circuit.

“I’ve created Jesse Ventura. He’s my business. He’s my corporation. I speak of him in the third person,” he says. “But then again, I think once people see me and know me, they realize some of it’s hype, and some of it’s not.”

Interacting with students, Ventura says, renewed his faith in the political system—something he’d all but given up on as he left office in 2002.

“The young people made me feel good about it,” he says. “They’re exceptionally bright, they want to know about it, they want to improve it. I was in the military at their age, which doesn’t allow you to be too political.”

As he mulls a presidential bid for 2008, Ventura says he’s going to hold onto his relationship with Harvard—if not as a tenured professor, then as a devoted fan of the women’s hockey team, a group he got to know personally during his days working out in the varsity gym.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from, Ventura explains, it’s where you are that matters, remarking that he turned Harvard into his second home.

“I’m a Harvard man,” he concludes, and although he may not be found at Daedalus on weekend nights, Ventura know’s Harvard’s hot spots.

“I’d go [to the Kong] Sunday afternoons, and it was pretty laid back and quiet,” he says, praising the restaurant’s lemon chicken. “They were probably still cleaning up then.”

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.