Rove To Visit Harvard in April

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl C. Rove will be speaking at Harvard on April 4, according to members of the executive board of the Harvard Republican Club (HRC).

The event, sponsored by the HRC, is slated to take place in the Winthrop Junior Common Room and to be open to all members of the Harvard community.

“Someone with the type of political genius he has happens only once in a generation, and when we have the chance to bring someone like that here, it’s a great opportunity,” said HRC President Caleb L. Weatherl ’10.

According to Weatherl, after the club’s new executive board was elected last fall, the board created a list of political figures they thought HRC members would like to hear speak on campus.

HRC Vice President for Campaigns and Activism Colin J. Motley ’10 said that many of the members are interested in behind-the-scenes politics, so the board wanted to bring in a political staffer like Rove.

“Whether you love or hate what he’s done, you have to respect his ability,” Weatherl said. “Karl Rove is arguably the greatest political mind of his generation.”

Weatherl was able to use a mutual contact to get in touch with Rove’s assistant.

“With his resignation being pretty recent, this is one of the first times that he was free,” Weatherl said.

A longtime Republican political strategist and advisor to President George W. Bush, Rove is widely credited as the mastermind behind the Republican presidential campaign victories in 2000 and 2004. He served in various positions in the Bush administration from January 2001 until his resignation last August.

“When it comes to someone like Karl Rove, he’s had an impact on the political climate of the past few years,” Motley said. “Having someone with that much knowledge come to campus is a great way to show what brilliant people are in our party and to show students how you go about running a great campaign.”

Weatherl and Motley said that there will likely be a formal RSVP to gauge student interest in attending the speech. Depending on the level of interest expressed, the group may then decide to lottery the event.

They also said they hoped this event would be similar to the one the HRC held with William Kristol ’73 last year, in which Kristol spoke to the group then allowed students the opportunity to ask questions.

Motley said that having the meeting in a small venue like the Winthrop JCR encourages students to linger around after the event to discuss what the speaker said, as they did after Kristol’s speech.

The leaders said they hoped that bringing Rove to campus would be a good way to share the club’s Republican values with other members of the Harvard community.

“I think that one of the things that Karl Rove has a natural talent for is selling ideas,” Weatherl said. “As a Republican at Harvard, that’s something you have to do everyday.”

—Staff writer Lauren D. Kiel can reached at lkiel@fas.harvard.edu.