Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [111]
So, I walked over to the table. I was still pretty imposing—six-four, 255 pounds—and getting back in shape by training for two hours every morning at the Harvard Athletic Club and then running three miles a day. Also, by now, I’d had a few brews. I stared hard at these three fellows and said, “What’s with these T-shirts, ‘HARVARD SUCKS’?”
One of them replied casually, “Well, we think Harvard sucks.”
I said, “Oh yeah? Where are you from?”
“Texas,” another said.
I said, “Really. Well, I go to Harvard. And I hear that, in Texas, the only thing they’ve got are steers and queers—and I don’t see no horns on you!”
That used to be our standard line in the Navy to get any Texan to fight. The three of them glared back at me, in silence.
Then I added this: “You’ve got two options. One is to deal with me. Two is to take the shirts off and put them on again. Inside out.”
They chose the second option.
Word spread quickly across the Harvard campus that Governor Ventura had stood tall for the Crimson.
Headline: THE BODY POLITIC
Like a pro wrestling match where the featured performer walks out and whips up the crowd beforehand, Jesse Ventura’s first Harvard class began early and outside the ropes. Arriving at Lowell House for his weekly seminar, Ventura—a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics this semester—waited for another class to finish. While he stood outside, students eager to hear from the former wrestling star and Minnesota governor, whose reputation for shooting from the hip is well established, gathered around. He did not disappoint.
—Boston Globe, February 25, 2004
I needed a title for my seminar, and I decided to call it “Body Slamming the Political Establishment: Third Party Politics.” I had access to the Harvard library, Widener, which is considered second only to the Library of Congress. Acres of books! I would spend hours there, and in my office, preparing my lectures. I didn’t go to Harvard to embarrass myself.
Any classes that are taken from fellowship professors are not graded. They’re intended as exchanges of ideas; getting people thinking. That’s what’s great about it. And anyone could attend. There would be posters all over campus promoting what my subject was that week. These had pictures of me in full battle attire, holding a big, menacing-looking rifle, above a caption that read, “BIG MAN ON CAMPUS.” I’m proud to say that they had to move my classes into an auditorium setting at Lowell House, to hold the numbers. It came to pass that I had the largest class attendance of any fellowship professor in Harvard history. Hundreds came every Tuesday, packed in to the rafters.
I told the students at the first session, “Look, you’re going to learn at Harvard all the academic part of politics—the theory. I’m here to teach you about the reality. And reality may not be the same as theory.”
The seminars lasted two hours, with the last forty-five minutes being all back-and-forth between the class and me. They don’t want a fellowship professor necessarily lecturing the kids, because they get that all day long. My first class focused on how I won the gubernatorial election in 1998. I asked the class if they knew which politician had pioneered the use of the Internet. (Hint: Not Howard Dean. Me.) We talked about why only half of the voting-age people in the U.S. even bother to go to the polls. And why there’s no public outcry over the Republicans and Democrats getting around the campaign-finance laws.
A fellowship professor is also allowed to bring in guest speakers. For one seminar, I had Governor Angus King come down from Maine to talk about governing from a third-party perspective. He was marvelous. He spoke of how an independent candidate can be a mediator, in a perfect position to bring the other two political sides toward