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John F. Kennedy: Impact and Legacy

John F. Kennedy had promised much but never had the opportunity to see his program through. It was, in the words of one notable biographer, “an unfinished life.” For that reason, assessments of the Kennedy presidency remain mixed.

Before winning the presidency, Kennedy had lived a life of privilege and comfort, and his relatively short congressional career had been unremarkable. Many voters yearned for the dynamism that Kennedy's youth and politics implied, but others worried that Kennedy's inexperience made him a poor choice to lead the nation during such a challenging time.

Early errors in judgment, particularly in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, seemingly confirmed these fears. By the summer of 1962, the administration was in trouble. A particularly difficult Cold War climate abroad, an antagonistic Congress at home, increasingly bold activist groups agitating for change, and a discouraging economic outlook all contributed to an increasingly negative view of the Kennedy White House.

That impression began to change in the fall of 1962. Skillful statesmanship—and some luck—led to notable success in the showdown over Cuba. The economic situation improved. Long-running, difficult negotiations finally resulted in a partial nuclear test ban treaty. And the work of civil rights activists and the occasional limited intervention of the federal government were slowly, but nevertheless steadily, wearing down the power of Southern segregationists.

But serious issues remained. Throughout the summer and fall of 1963, the situation in South Vietnam deteriorated; by the end of Kennedy's presidency, 16,000 US military “advisers” had been dispatched to the country. More importantly, the administration apparently had no realistic plan to resolve the conflict. In the area of civil rights, some progress had been achieved, but these successes had come mostly in spite of—not because of—the White House. Bloody conflict was becoming more prevalent on America's streets, and racial injustice remained rampant.

Assessments of Kennedy's presidency have spanned a wide spectrum. Early studies, the most influential of which were written by New Frontiersmen close to Kennedy, were openly admiring. They built upon on the collective grief from Kennedy's public slaying—the quintessential national trauma. Later, many historians focused on the seedier side of Kennedy family dealings and John Kennedy's questionable personal morals. More recent works have tried to find a middle ground.

In nation's popular memory, Kennedy still commands fascination as a compelling, charismatic leader during a period of immense challenge to the American body politic.

Marc J. Selverstone

Associate Professor of History Miller Center, University of Virginia

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JFK's Very Revealing Harvard Application Essay

At 17 years old, the future president seemed to understand that the value of an elite education is in the status it offers.

John F. Kennedy is one of the most mythologized figures in contemporary American history. At age 17, though, he was just a kid trying to get into college (a kid with a wealthy, famous father, of course).

The Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has a digitized version of Kennedy's 1935 Harvard application, which includes his grades and his response to the essay prompt, "Why do you wish to come to Harvard?" Here's how the future president answered:

The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university. I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college , but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a "Harvard man" is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain. April 23, 1935 John F. Kennedy

Business Insider dismisses the essay for being five sentences long (I'm not sure how much more he could have written given the space) and implies that his answer wasn't carefully considered. That's probably true—Kennedy's grades show that he wasn't an especially good student in high school, and there's not much evidence that he took his education seriously at this point in his life. Plus, as Gawker points out , Kennedy wrote nearly exactly the same essay for his Princeton application.

Still, Kennedy's essay shows a profound, if implicit, understanding of the primary value of attending an elite school: status and personal connections, rather than mastery of academic skills and knowledge. Notice that he only makes one mention of the education he'd receive at Harvard—a passing reference to the school's superior "liberal education." The rest of the paragraph focuses on the the non-academic benefits: having a "better background," sharing the same alma mater with his dad, and enjoying the "enviable distinction" of being a Harvard Man.

And it is, indeed, an enviable distinction. Harvard has produced eight United States presidents, more than any other school. The school's website has a whole section devoted to all the alumni who've won Nobel prizes. Two of its dropouts are among the richest people in America. Whether these glories are due to the school's excellent education or its impressive alumni network and name recognition, who knows? But Kennedy clearly thought he knew the answer.

The Legacy of JFK

President Kennedy inspired a generation to accept responsibility for its government, and its world, by taking political and social action. As president, he fought to ensure equal rights and opportunities for all Americans. He encouraged Americans to lift up those less fortunate than themselves, both at home and abroad. He challenged the nation to reach for the impossible and land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. He set new directions for international diplomacy, seeking better relations with Latin America and newly independent nations. He reduced the threat of nuclear war by opening the lines of communication with Moscow and offering to help “make the world safe for diversity.”

John F. Kennedy’s legacy is a vision of political action and public service based on courage, service, inclusion, and innovation.

We will send Americans abroad who are qualified to do a job. We will send those abroad who are committed to the concept which motivates the Peace Corps.

We will send Americans abroad who are qualified to do a job

How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers. How many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we've ever made in the past.

I think Americans are willing to contribute

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required.

We pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves

Use the links below to discover more about President Kennedy and public service.

• Harvard Institute of Politics
• New Frontier Award
• Peace Corps
• Profile in Courage Award

We must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.

Peace and freedom walk together

Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.

Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed form the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed for social and economic oppression. And this nation for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

This nation for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free

It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely Presidents or Congressmen or Governors, but every citizen of the United States.

These are matters which concern us all

Use the links below to discover more about President Kennedy and civil rights.

• 1963: The Struggle for Civil Rights
• Integrating Ole Miss
• The Civil Rights Movement

And that is the most important topic on earth: peace

That is the most important topic on earth: peace

What kind of peace do I mean? And what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children-not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women-not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

What kind of peace do we seek

For peace is a process-a way of solving problems.

Peace is a process

Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.

Let us call a truce to terror

Use the links below to discover more about President Kennedy and peace and diplomacy.

• Alliance for Progress
• Kennedy Scholars
• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis
• World on the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis

To the extent that artists struggle to express beauty in form and color and sound, to the extent that they write about man's struggle with nature and society, or himself, to that extent they strike a responsive chord in all humanity.

Artists struggle to express beauty in form and color and sound

Behind the storm of daily conflict and crisis, the dramatic confrontations, the tumult of political struggle, the poet, the artist, the musician, continues the quiet work of centuries, building bridges of experience between peoples, reminding man of the universality of his feelings and desires and despairs, and reminding him that the forces that unite are deeper than those that divide.

The forces that unite are deeper than those that divide

Moreover, as a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts, for art is the great democrat calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. The mere accumulation of wealth and power is available to the dictator and the democrat alike. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and spirit which finds its greatest flowering in the free society.

Art is the great democrat calling forth the creative genius

Robert Frost said it: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Use the links below to discover more about President Kennedy and arts and culture.

• Arts and Culture in the Kennedy White House
• The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
• The White House Restoration

Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.

Now it is time to take longer strides

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

Whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

This nation should commit itself to...landing a man on the moon

The survival of the man who first makes this daring flight, but in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

It will not be one man going to the moon...it will be an entire nation

Use the links below to discover more about President Kennedy and science and innovation.

• Apollo 11 Moon Landing
• Space Program
• We Choose the Moon

• Made by History

Remember JFK Not for His Assassination, But for His Civil Rights Advocacy

A lthough most Americans today have no living memory of President John F. Kennedy , we are reminded of his assassination this week, as we have been every year since November of 1963. No incontrovertible new evidence about the Kennedy assassination has emerged in six decades. Speculation and conspiracy theories about “what really happened” abound and continue to fascinate. They do so at the expense of what is truly worth remembering and memorializing about Kennedy’s final months as president.

In the summer and fall of 1963, Kennedy called upon Americans to address what he described as a “moral crisis” confronting the nation—the continued reality of racial injustice in the United States. The steps he took and the message he conveyed made a deep impression on his fellow citizens. They remind us today of how consequential a President’s words, demeanor, and approach to a riven citizenry can be at difficult turning points in the nation’s history.

In 1963, racial segregation was still very much alive in the United States despite numerous federal court decisions striking down Jim Crow laws and practices, including the 1954 landmark Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Kennedy, notwithstanding his campaign promises, had acted only haltingly . Mass protests that spring organized by civil rights activists in Birmingham and other cities dramatically catapulted the struggle against racial injustice onto the national stage. To widespread public horror, local officials in Birmingham had brutally loosed police dogs and fire hoses against demonstrators, including children.

Moral outrage did little to quell the continued resistance of ardent segregationists. June brought George Wallace’s infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” when, in defiance of both a May federal district court desegregation order and the Kennedy Justice Department, Alabama’s Governor sought to prevent the enrollment of Vivian Malone and James Hood, two African American students, at the state university. Even as Wallace was forced to retreat, he vowed to fight further “federal interference” in his state and “the trend toward military dictatorship in this country.”

Read More: What These 3 Longstanding JFK Myths Reveal About Amer i ca

On June 11, 1963, the very evening of the showdown with Wallace, President Kennedy delivered a remarkable televised speech on civil rights. It was the first presidential address to the nation explicitly characterizing and condemning at length segregation as a moral wrong, unworthy of a great country. “One hundred years of delay have passed,” Kennedy reminded the nation, “since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” Kennedy further promised to introduce a sweeping civil rights bill which would take aim at the heart of Jim Crow.

Before Kennedy had even finished speaking, telegrams flooded the White House from citizens moved by his remarks.

The sentiments they expressed ranged from outrage to exhilaration. One segregationist mused, “I wish you’d take a night off and go to the theater like Lincoln did and then you wouldn’t have any more problems. Neither would we.” Another critic requested, “Please reconsider and don’t introduce your civil rights legislation in Congress because I may want the privilege of throwing you out of my business one day.” He added, “People are fed up with the K-K-K from Washington – Kennedy - Kennedy + King Klan.” A woman who took pains to identify herself as a mother promised Kennedy that she would pray every night that the President would see the error of his ways. If he did not, she continued, “I pray that the Lord will strike you dead before you can lead this country to destruction by these immature and forced actions.”

Many African Americans, whose plight the president’s speech sought to redress, responded with gratitude and admiration. One confessed, “You are fulfilling my hopes and dreams as I knew you would. Being a Negro, I know the embarrassment, frustration, anger and hurt that we as a race must suffer. I am glad to know that there are better days ahead for my children.” “Your speech tonight was a profile in courage,” another woman wrote. “May the infant Jesus sustain you as you go forth to be crucified.” Myrlie Evers, then a young wife and mother, watched Kennedy’s speech in her home in Jackson, Miss., as she waited for her husband Medgar to return home from his duties as the state’s NAACP field secretary. The President’s remarks, she would remember, “moved me and gave me hope and made the work Medgar was doing seem more important than ever.” Within hours an appalling act of violence took her husband’s life when a Ku Klux Klansman murdered Medgar Evers in his driveway near midnight.

Evers’ murder highlighted the real danger faced by movement leaders and the urgency the moment demanded. In the following weeks, activists finalized plans for a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to pressure Congress to enact the legislation called for by President Kennedy and to ensure the bill had teeth.

As anticipated, Kennedy’s commitment had immediate political repercussions. “This is a civil wrongs bill, not a civil rights bill,” said Senator Richard B. Russell, a Georgia Democrat. Debates over the proposed bill threatened Democratic Party unity in Texas and the president’s hopes for reelection, prompting plans for a multi-city peacekeeping visit to the Lonestar State that November to mend fences. Enthusiastic crowds greeted President and Mrs. Kennedy in San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. The tragic end of that journey at Dealey Plaza and the brutal assassination of the nation’s youngest-ever elected president failed to quench the era’s heated rhetoric, and in fact, only seemed to intensify it.

Read More: How Robert F. Kennedy Shaped His Brother's Response to Civil Rights

After Kennedy’s death, the grief that engulfed the nation prompted a new flood of letters to the White House—this time directed to the president’s widow and children. The arrest and murder of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald did not allay the soul searching expressed by citizens who worried about the state of their country.

Among the messages sent to the White House was an “epitaph” written by Martin Luther King Jr. and published in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s newsletter. He lamented, “Our late President was assassinated by a morally inclement climate. It is a climate filled with heavy torrents of false accusation, jostling winds of hatred and raging storms of violence. It is a climate where men cannot disagree without being disagreeable, and where they express dissent through violence and murder.”

Another young woman expressed this sentiment more personally: “The reason that all men mourn the death of your husband is because we feel that we have played a part in his murder. We may not have been there, or even known that you were there but we are all responsible because we did not fight with him in everything he stood for, we just sat back and watched. We have wasted a great man. We may not realize that fault now, but in time, history will write its own story on blood filled pages.”

As we reflect on the death of President Kennedy, we should recall that amid the turmoil of his times, he found the determination to lead the nation forward despite profound divisions within the country. If lingering questions around the circumstances of his death remain, they should not obscure what we do know from the letters written to Kennedy in the last months of his life and to his widow and children after his death. “A great change is at hand,” he instructed Americans in his civil rights speech—a prospect that inspired hope in many and that would be, in a measure, fulfilled when his successor, Lyndon Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 nearly eight months after Kennedy’s assassination. Transformational changes, though incomplete, would follow in the ensuing decades even though the promise of racial equality has yet to be achieved. That, as much as any smoking gun evidence that may never materialize, is truly worth remembering this Nov. 22, 2023.

Sharron Wilkins Conrad is an associate professor of history at Tarrant County College, a senior fellow at Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History and the former Director of Education at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. She is completing a book manuscript entitled The Trinity: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Their Civil Rights Legacies in African American Imagination . Ellen Fitzpatrick is presidential chair and professor of history, Emerita at the University of New Hampshire. She is the author and editor of several books including Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation and The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here .

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Write to Sharron Wilkins Conrad and Ellen Fitzpatrick / Made by History at [email protected]

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Thoughts on jfk at 100.

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Session recalls the president and his policies, and his understanding of global ties

Though it’s been a century since the birth of President John F. Kennedy ’40, and more than half a century since he articulated his inspirational and optimistic vision of the United States as a force for prosperity and peace, his words and ideals remain deeply pertinent.

“It was here at Harvard that my father became the man that he would be … a student engaged in the world. He combined his passion for history with his commitment to public service,” said Caroline Kennedy ’80 during a symposium on Thursday to commemorate the centennial of the late president at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).

Speaking of her father’s enduring popularity and influence, Kennedy said, “Fundamentally, it has to do with his vision of America in the world. A vision of hope, combined with a strategy of peace, is the greatest source of American power and global security.” It was a vision “he articulated the moment he became president and lived by all of his life.”

That standard, set out in the Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, is still what America is judged by, said Kennedy, who was U.S. ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration. “We are still the leader and defender of an international, rules-based order that works to strengthen multilateral institutions, advance the sovereignty of nations, and secure basic human rights.”

The daylong event featured discussions with faculty, government officials, thought leaders, as well as members of the Kennedy and Shriver families, reflecting on the enduring relevance and instruction offered by Kennedy’s principles and priorities, including America’s central role in the world, the legacy of civil rights, and ongoing interest in the future of international development, environmental policy, and public leadership.

Referencing then-U.S. Senator Kennedy’s return to Harvard in 1956 to give the Commencement address , President Drew Faust noted his championing the importance of intellectual life.

“Kennedy’s appeal for recognition of what he called the mutual dependence of the worlds of intellectuals and politicians, his call for a central role for learning and expertise, these are all too timely today as we find ourselves in what some have dubbed a ‘post-factual era’ in American public life,” Faust said.

During a discussion on America’s power in a changing world, panelists critiqued excerpts from a lesser-known but significant speech to graduates at American University in June 1963. Known as the “peace speech,” Kennedy spoke of humanity’s new fragility and interconnectedness amid the threat of nuclear war’s mutually-assured destruction, and why America must therefore relentlessly pursue peace around the world.

“For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we are all mortal,” Kennedy said shortly after he had stared down nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The speech was Kennedy’s attempt to explain what he learned during the grave and defining event of his presidency, the Soviet Union’s 1962 installation of nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. mainland from Cuba. It was “a reasoned account of an insane situation” that has parallels in the perils of North Korea’s recent nuclear provocations, said Graham Allison , Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and longtime director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs .

“The Cuban Missile Crisis was his finest moment of crisis management, but the American University speech was his finest moment as a statesman,” said Joe Nye , Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. The speech marked “a turning point” in U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, one that ushered in the start of arms control and set in motion “a totally new way of approaching it” by turning away from ubiquitous Cold War rhetoric and proposing a plan that involved compromise.

“President Kennedy accepted the mantle of this liberal world order, the leadership of it and the structure of it, and the urgent necessity of it, and that’s called into question now,” said Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at the Belfer Center. “So we have a big debate in 2017 about what kind of country we are, what kind of leader we are in the world.”

The conditions of tied-in destiny that Kennedy identified 50 years ago have only expanded since then, with the growth of economic globalization, the internet, climate change, pandemics, and foreign policy more broadly.

“When President Kennedy says, ‘Let us focus on the means by which we can resolve our differences,’ that clearly is a call for diplomacy. But it’s also a good reminder that when we look at these new ways in which we have tied our destiny to every other person on the planet, these new challenges cannot be addressed through military force or conflict,” said Meghan O’Sullivan , Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs and director of the Belfer Center’s Geopolitics of Energy Project, they “can only be addressed through international cooperation.”

The development of instruments of war has outpaced the instruments of peace, as Kennedy noted. It’s a quagmire that has grown since the 1960s, hobbling contemporary efforts to resolve difficult conflicts in countries like Syria and Iraq.

“We have a better sense of how to handle war, and we have failed so often at handling peace or trying to achieve peace,” said O’Sullivan, and too often the complexity of forging peace is used as a justification for disengagement. Kennedy reminded listeners that “we cannot believe in the impossibility of peace. We should never use that view — that some people are just committed to conflict — as a reason for inaction.”

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Essay: 50 Years After His Assassination, JFK's Legacy Survives

Shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, CBS commentator Eric Sevareid noted the principal legacy of the murdered leader might well be an ‘attitude,’ a contagious spirit that all things are possible if only we have the vision and will.

In fact, JFK had important tangible accomplishments – as well as failures – during his brief tenure in office. Nonetheless, Sevareid was remarkably perceptive in emphasizing the emotional impacts of this president on the population. His shocking grotesque murder continues to reverberate in our collective lives, even after a half century.

The administration’s disastrous failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs dogged President Kennedy from the start, and provided Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev with strong incentive to deploy offensive missiles on the island. Intense U.S. efforts to kill Fidel Castro, directly pressed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, spurred Moscow.

This led to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. In recent years, meetings between surviving officials from both sides in the confrontation have revealed that nuclear war was even closer than realized in that tense time.

The President, a combat veteran of World War II, resisted powerful pressure to attack Cuba and was highly imaginative. He and his advisers were able to get the missiles out of Cuba through a blockade, combined with a secret Cuba-Turkey missile trade. Kennedy’s outlook contrasts markedly with the administration of President George W. Bush regarding Iraq.

In the aftermath of the missile crisis, Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev achieved a treaty banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, a major breakthrough. The Senate ratified the treaty with a bipartisan vote of 80-19. JFK had other success with Congress, including international trade negotiation authority key to the 1967 Kennedy Round agreement.

Two domestic issues always on the front burner were civil rights and organized crime, the former reflecting growing popular pressures, the latter the focus of driven RFK. JFK was careful on race relations, addressing the subject decisively only when pressed to do so by a massive public march on Washington.

RFK was relentless in pursuit of the mafia, while simultaneously gangsters were recruited for the effort to kill Castro. Dallas ended both efforts. Regarding organized crime, a decade passed before the Nixon administration returned to prosecution, notably with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) legislation.

People around Robert Kennedy were puzzled by his marked disinterest in possible conspiracy in the assassination. In hindsight, RFK no doubt avoided that dark tangled path because he might come face-to-face with it himself.

Senator John Kennedy’s book ‘Profiles in Courage,’ about U.S. Senators who put principle above political expediency, received the Pulitzer Prize. While critics cracked President Kennedy should show less profile and more courage, he actually demonstrated considerable personal strength.

Professor Herbert Parmet has documented exceptionally serious health problems that plagued JFK from birth. Despite this, he managed to enlist in the U.S. Navy in World War II, then volunteered for hazardous PT boat duty.

Sevareid’s observation applies perhaps most tangibly to the American space program. President Kennedy early on made a dramatic public commitment to carry out a successful manned moon landing, including safe return to earth. 

A number of technological innovations resulted from the mammoth space effort, including extreme miniaturization of electronics.  Every time you turn on a computer or cell phone, you’re saying hello to JFK.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of the book After the Cold War (NYU Press).  He can be reached at [email protected]

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John f. kennedy’s harvard entrance essay resurfaces online 87 years later.

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It’s no “Ask not… ” speech, that’s for sure.

John F. Kennedy’s college admissions letter to Harvard University has resurfaced on social media some 87 years later, and the Twitterati are hardly impressed with the iconic 35th president of the United States.

The note, penned by the young White House hopeful on April 23, 1935, is currently archived at the  John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum and Library in Boston, Massachusetts.

His prompt was simple — “Why do you wish to come to Harvard?” — but his answer was even simpler.

In an indisputably underwhelming statement composed of just five sentences, the 17-year-old Bay State native answered the query that would determine his educational future.

He wrote, “The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university.” 

He continued: “I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a ‘Harvard man’ is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.”

Kennedy eventually wound up at Harvard and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in government in 1940.

“ ’Harvard is a whole vibe. And I’m tryna catch the wave. Lemme in.’ — JFK,” one reader joked . The reaction garnered more than 59,000 likes on Twitter.

"Harvard is a whole vibe. And I'm tryna catch the wave. Lemme in." – JFK — C.E. Little, Ph.D. (@ItsDrLittle) February 1, 2022

“If you want to see peak white mediocrity, here’s JFK’s Harvard admission essay,” added another.

Even the Velveeta cheese brand chimed in : “LOL OUR PRODUCT DESCRIPTION FROM OUR WEBSITE IS 28 WORDS LONGER THAN JFK’S HARVARD COLLEGE ESSAY!”

The Democrat’s short but influential term as the nation’s youngest elected president began in 1961. JFK was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963 at the age of 46.

But his family’s academic legacy continues until this day . Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy’s grandson via daughter Caroline Kennedy, recently graduated from Harvard Law and Harvard Business School.

Schlossberg, 29, previously attended Yale University and graduated in 2015 with a degree in history with a concentration in Japanese history.

He also appeared at the 2020 Democratic National Convention where he voiced support of now-president Joe Biden and touched upon JFK’s career.

“Times have changed, but the themes of my grandfather’s speech — courage, unity and patriotism — are as important today as they were in 1960,” he said. “Once again, we need a leader who believes America’s best days are yet to come. We need Joe Biden.”

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JFK 60 years on: his leadership style and the reality behind the myths

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John F. Kennedy retains an iconic status as an exemplary – even inspirational – public figure and his leadership approach has been influential for decades.

The former US president (1961-63) projected an idealist image of leadership , which, at its best, demonstrated that the political system can address society’s most profound challenges. His was an optimistic and ambitious presidency that, although tragically cut short, achieved considerable success across a range of activities as diverse as poverty reduction , bans of nuclear weapons testing , and the Mercury and Apollo space programmes.

At 43 when elected in November 1960, JFK remains the youngest president to take the oath of office – and his youth might have been considered as a disadvantage, especially in foreign policy leadership – but he had honed his foreign affairs knowledge to an extent with his very extensive overseas travel during his time in Congress, and during military service. He also appointed an extremely able and highly educated cabinet .

As the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s death approaches, it’s worth remembering that the Kennedy presidency laid down a marker for ambitious, informed and progressive styles of leadership. Jack, Robert and Edward Kennedy all contributed in various ways to Democratic political causes, such as expanding civil rights and legislating for healthcare reform.

Read more: Romantic heroes or ‘one of us’ – how we judge political leaders is rarely objective or rational

JFK’s leadership style has been hugely influential, acting as a political and cultural model emulated by subsequent presidents as varied as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. While politically to the right of Kennedy, Reagan (a former actor) arguably shared JFK’s sense of political theatre . Clinton tried to develop a youthful, vigorous and idealistic image modelled after JFK , although many of his attempts to pass legislation contributing to key Democratic goals (such as healthcare reform) ultimately failed. Clinton, like JFK, liked to gather together large groups of intellectuals and leaders in their fields to discuss policies and issues. Obama believed in diplomacy and negotiations, even with adversaries, as JFK did, according to Ted Sorensen , JFK’s former speechwriter.

Kennedy’s open and engaging style made government and public service seem worthwhile and relevant . Methods used to construct presidential “leadership rankings” are often challenged , but JFK has consistently been ranked in the top ten of many, despite having just over 1,000 days in office. The Kennedy family thrived on ambition and power, but their professed duty to serve the public seemed genuine, as did the desire to learn and to do better.

JFK governed from the centre, appointing a cabinet with varied political backgrounds. He had an effective record of passing legislation while in office, and he contributed to the eventual passing of the historic civil rights legislation under his successor, Lyndon Johnson.

In our own archival research , we explored the development of what became known as the Hickory Hill seminars, a series of talks and social gatherings that usually took place at Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s home in McLean, Virginia. The events functioned as a place to explore social problems and their solutions, and as a kind of proto-leadership development seminar. Topics of discussion ranged from great literary works to child poverty. Invited speakers included the environmentalist Rachel Carson , and the philosopher A.J. Ayer . The inner circle of the Kennedy administration would actively engage with external people and ideas, in stark contrast to the partisan, secretive and often walled-off styles of leadership that are so common today.

JFK’s presidency and leadership featured some notable successes. He used the federal government to enforce racial desegregation in several high-profile situations . And his administration prepared the ground for the aforementioned civil rights legislation which was passed after his death. Less positively, the power of Kennedy as a brand was deliberately cultivated and policed by his inner circle. His father crowed about selling Jack’s image “ like soap flakes ”.

Avoiding groupthink

JFK’s weaknesses as a leader were also substantial. He acquiesced to the disastrous Bay of Pigs incursion, where military experts wrongly predicted that Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba could be overthrown with ease. JFK learnt a lesson the hardest way possible about accepting military advice. After the Bay of Pigs incident, JFK introduced new ways of working to avoid “groupthink” . His later success in the Cuban missile crisis was partly derived from this lesson.

But Kennedy also deepened the US’s appalling intervention in Vietnam . He subscribed to the “ domino theory ” about the supposed need for the US to confront communism in Asia whatever the cost. His administration dragged America towards an unwinnable war by propping up the unstable South Vietnam regime, and colluding in a bloody coup against one of its leaders.

Speechwriters and academic historians such as Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr expended huge efforts in curating and promoting the Kennedy family image as a form of progressive, even heroic, leadership (Schlesinger was in charge of the day-to-day running of the Hickory Hill seminars, and was a key figure in the development of presidential leadership rankings ). These efforts surely influenced the depth and longevity of the Kennedy appeal.

There are other connections between JFK and the study of leadership. Leadership theorist James MacGregor Burns wrote a campaign-trail biography of JFK, and Burns’ work heavily informs the ubiquitous notion of “transformational leadership” , the idea that the most effective and ethical forms of leadership are those that emphasise vision, change and inspiration, rather than the more prosaic forms of leadership that amount to little more than looking after the shop.

JFK is widely remembered as a good president, but the idealistic Camelot vision has undoubtedly been exaggerated .

JFK was due to give a speech in Dallas on what became his final trip, warning of “voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality” – which, he feared could “handicap this country’s security”. Those aggressive and populist leadership styles are in the ascendancy, as personified by Donald Trump.

Rather than engage with political rivals, their approach is to dismiss and attack them. Robert Kennedy junior, for instance, is running for president following a Trumpian playbook of vilification and populism, positioning himself as an outsider who will “clean up the system”, rather than a scion of one of America’s most influential families.

Despite this, the JFK legacy retains the potential to promote a serious and ethical approach to leadership. It incorporates visions of idealism and public service, not selfishness and vilification. However, this portrayal often fails to acknowledge JFK’s flaws and failures.

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• Film Events
• Post-1970 Art
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• Development of the President
• John Kennedy, The Leader
• The Speech – The Politician’s Poetry
• Kennedy’s Legacy
• Selected Speeches
• Development of the Poet
• Robert Frost, The Teacher
• The Poet – Politician
• Frost’s Legacy
• Selected Poems
• Bibliography
• Reflecting on the Film
• Discussion Questions
• Submissions Guidelines
• Sample Topics & Lesson Plans
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Cuban Missile Crisis September 1962
• Cuban Missile Crisis October 16, 1962
• Cuban Missile Crisis – October 24, 1962

Winner of 1st Place in the 27th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards

“This is by far the coolest book I’ve ever read because of the parallel between a president and a writer. I love the authenticity that this book offers, as well as the rich history behind each entry. My favorite was the essay about going to Amherst College, how the author gave a declaration of disagreement at the beginning, and then gave a declaration of agreement at the end, which made for a very comical ending, even though the entry was very compelling… A beautiful tribute to two of America’s best-loved icons…”  –  Judge, 27th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.   December 2019

Outstanding. Excellently told and constructed story.

A tale of two giants of history, John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost, one representing the power of the spoken political word, the other the power of the written poetic word, both persons of deep conviction. JFK’s speech at the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library on October 26, 1963 at Amherst College was a seminal moment for the attending Amherst College classmates, one that continues to resonate today as they continue to pass on to future generations Kennedy’s call to social action and self-sacrifice. A supreme example of how benefits bestowed on a select few can lead to benefits for all humankind through personal interaction, sharing and mentoring. Though focused on a singular event from 1963, the impact of this event extends to countless acts of good works today and future days to come. The Amherst examples are inspiring, as is the book. – Review on Barnes and Noble

Advance Praise for JFK: The Last Speech

“When President Kennedy headed to Amherst College for a dedication ceremony, he might have expected to be a big voice in national affairs for decades to come. Instead, we got an unexpected valedictory, a statement of values at the end of a man’s life. In this book you’ll travel to a small town in Massachusetts in 1963, and see how this speech from JFK echoed through the lives of the young men there to hear it. Sometimes small events end up being big ones.”  — RAY SUAREZ, Journalist, author, visiting professor at Amherst College

“A heart-warming book that recreates for a new generation an optimistic young president honoring an aging poet’s art and combines youthful reactions of students who were there with mature stories from the paths they followed in their own creative lives.”  — ALICE M. RIVLIN, Senior fellow in Economic Studies and the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institute

“At a time when political morality, civility, and fidelity to a common destiny are brutally trampled, day by day, this volume on JFK’s call for the cultivation of civic virtue is welcome nourishment for our democracy. Kennedy’s final speech not only affirms the value of a liberal arts education as the seedbed for public service but serves as timely inspiration for Americans aching to restore and reclaim the American dream.” — HEDRICK SMITH, Author of Who Stole the American Dream?, executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org

“This book sounds a much-needed non-partisan call for public service and civic engagement.” — JAMES HARDING, Major General, USA (ret)

“JFK: The Last Speech is a project that could not have come to a boil at a more appropriate time in our nation’s history nor been presented in so compelling a way. At its heart it is a call to arms in the battle to preserve and enhance civic life, a challenge the project meets in film, on its website and—most ambitious—as a book. Essayists from academia, journalism, the arts, and from a distinguished array of the country’s deepest thinkers offer thoughts provoked by John F. Kennedy’s last speech. The speech reminds us what an inspiration a president can be and each of these essays proves it. It is a volume to be read, reread, and then read yet again.” — DOUG CLIFTON, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, former Executive Editor of the Miami Herald, and Editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“Over a half a century later, John F. Kennedy’s October 1963 visit to Amherst College still resonates. The many legacies of Kennedy’s soaring speech and brief appearance are captured wonderfully in these fascinating pages.” — ELLEN FITZPATRICK, Historian, specializing in modern American political and intellectual history. Author of nine books including Letters to Jackie and The Highest Glass Ceiling.

“The arrival of this documentary film, book and website could not be more timely. Our deeply divided nation needs more humanistic reflection, not less; more art, not less; more attempts to understand ourselves and each other, as we try to reach some agreement about what truly matters. That is what is championed in this outstanding collection of essays.” — DAVID TEBALDI, PhD. Executive Director of MassHumanities since 1985. Editor of Reflecting on Values, The Unity and Diversity of the Humanities. 2017 recipient of the Commonwealth Award for Leadership in improving civic life in Massachusetts.

A month before he died, President Kennedy gave a stirring speech to the students at Amherst College as he dedicated a library named for Robert Frost. JFK called that generation to lives of civic action that would be guided by the insights of liberal arts education and would challenge entrenched power appropriately. JFK: The Last Speech reissues his challenge to a nation that sorely needs it. The book is a rich, diverse, and moving collection of original materials from the dedication (and then memorial) events of the fall of 1963 at Amherst, stories of how the speech galvanized students in the audience to lead lives of civic commitment, and reflections on these themes by a set of distinguished commentators. The book is a civics course in a nutshell.” — HAROLD BRUFF, J.D. Former Dean of the University of Colorado Law School. Former senior attorney and advisor for the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Dept. of Justice. Author of Untrodden Ground: How Presidents Interpret the Constitution (2015).

“In a time when the value of contributing to the common good must return to the political foreground, this book and the man it details serve as reminders of the power of service. JFK, the builder of the Peace Corps and the inspiration of a generation, is set as a model and challenger for current and future generations, posing the timeless and urgent question: “for what do we use our powers, or does power use us?” — ROSANNE HAGGERTY, Founder and CEO of Community Solutions; a leader in solving problems that create and sustain homelessness; MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Ashoka Senior Fellow, recipient of Jane Jacobs medal for New Ideas and Activism.

“Required reading for anyone who wants to learn about the power of words in providing political and civic leadership. President Kennedy mastered the art of language in conveying a timeless message about our nation and its highest principles. Like Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, he used language to reinforce our loftiest ideals.”  — KENNETH FEINBERG, Former Administrator of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors for the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, author of What Is Life Worth? and Who Gets What: Fair Compensation after Tragedy and Financial Upheaval.

“Politics and poetry are interwoven in this rich description of one of President John F. Kennedy’s last speeches, at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library, a month before his untimely assassination.

The personal interplay between Robert Frost and John F. Kennedy serves as a backdrop to a perceptive description of the interplay of the arts and modern day politics. JFK’s words, “Where power corrupts, poetry cleanses” still rings true today. This timely analysis of JFK’s last speech amid the background of 1963, remains timeless in its message and observations.” — The Honorable Thomas M. Davis III, Former Member of Congress (VA)

“The volume features pieces that reflect on Kennedy’s political legacy and the tumultuous times within which he governed and meditations on the core message of his speech—the profound significance of liberal education for a flourishing democracy.

The editors curate … illuminating essays on Frost’s career and his shifting relationship with Kennedy … and furnish a kaleidoscopic view of the event, its historical and political context, and personal ramifications. Some of the essays speak to the inspiration Kennedy provided….

The book crescendos into a discussion of the political significance of a liberal education, with commentary supplied by well-known luminaries, like journalist/author Fareed Zakaria and actor/director Robert Redford… Economist [and Amherst ’64 graduate] Joseph Stiglitz: after observing the ways in which college education will necessarily have to change in order to meet new fiscal realities and technological innovations, argues … the humanist core of a liberal arts education remains unchanged. It is the outgrowth of the Enlightenment, the view that through disciplined reasoning we can come to a better understanding of our world, of our society, and of ourselves.

All the relevant primary source documents are included as well, including Kennedy’s handwritten edits of the speech originally prepared by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.” — Kirkus Reviews. Read the full Kirkus Review

NOTE FROM CULLEN MURPHY

Chair of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College

  By the time I was an undergraduate, John F. Kennedy’s visit to the campus was a decade in the past.  And that decade had seemed like a century. But the visit itself remained fresh in many minds.  And the message can never be dimmed by age.  Has any president spoken more eloquently about the critical role of literature and the arts in the life of our republic?  Or about the critical responsibilities that go with privilege?  I use the word “critical” in all senses of that term.  To deliver this message at Amherst was especially appropriate – a college with a long tradition of service, one that would be revitalized by many of the students who heard Kennedy speak.  To hear Kennedy’s words—and to see the copy of the speech he revised by hand, which shows him to have been a superb literary craftsman—is to connect with a moment that transcends the conventional unfurling of time.  Amherst College is proud to congratulate all who played a part in creating JFK: The Last Speech.

Introduction to the book

The documentary film and book, JFK: The Last Speech , emerged from the 50th reunion project of the Amherst College Class of 1964. The film and book describe the background of Kennedy’s relationship with Robert Frost, the challenge President Kennedy presented to students at Amherst College, how some of those students responded over the following half-century, and the relevance and haunting irony that JFK’s words bring to the problems of now. When civic culture is fractured and the value of the liberal arts is questioned, this message from 1963 has particular resonance

For the first time in our American history, Kennedy invited a poet, Robert Frost, to read a poem at a presidential inauguration. Their relationship continued through most of JFK’s term, until a schism in the fall of 1962. Nonetheless, President Kennedy accepted an invitation to speak at a convocation at Amherst College to dedicate the Robert Frost Library. That speech, little noticed at the time, has since been recognized as Kennedy’s finest. We heard that speech firsthand; we wanted a new generation to hear those words. Our classmates’ stories show the impact that Kennedy’s speech —and College President Plimpton’s eulogy — had on our lives; these stories demonstrate how to put ideas into action. Finally, and more importantly, we wanted to show that Kennedy’s message is more relevant than ever before to contemporary life.

The first part of  the book,  JFK: The Last Speech , “October-November 1963,” introduce contemporary readers to both Robert Frost and John F. Kennedy and provide critical source documents: the text of Kennedy’s speech, his remarks at the groundbreaking, and Amherst president Calvin Plimpton’s brief eulogy for the fallen president on November 22, 1963. First-person accounts of the president’s visit from a variety of perspectives round out the story, and an annotated timeline adds the context of national and world events at the time.

In the second part, “Let us go and do the work he couldn’t complete,” the four individuals featured in the documentary film, Ted Nelson, Steve Downs, Gene Palumbo, and George Wanlass, tell their remarkably different stories in greater depth. Nelson, a lifelong activist, describes his experiences with the Peace Corps in rural Turkey; Downs, an attorney, recounts his efforts to bring justice to wrongly accused immigrants; Palumbo, who reports for the New York Times, witnesses the ravages of war on life in El Salvador; Wanlass, a rancher, tells of collecting the art of the American West for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University. Seven additional classmates tell their stories as well; stories that illustrate the lifelong impact of Kennedy’s speech and Plimpton’s eulogy.

In the third and final part, “Poetry, Power, and Citizenship in the Modern World,” distinguished individuals have contributed their thoughts on the role of education and the liberal arts in our world today. Poets, artists, writers, political and religious leaders, all have been in the forefront of the effort to clarify our values. Jon Meacham examines Kennedy’s leadership; Jay Parini brings Frost’s poetry to a contemporary audience. Robert Redford graciously allowed us to reprint his essay, “Society’s Questioner,” and Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III gave us permission to reprint his remarks at Amherst College, October 28, 2017, at a symposium titled “Poetry and Politics: A Celebration of the Life and Legacy of President John F. Kennedy.”

These collected stories, from various perspectives, recall or revisit a towering speech. The reader can find the background of the Frost-Kennedy relationship and the words the audience heard, see the words in action over five decades, and then explore the lessons that they hold for us today.

If these stories — the memories of one fall day and a presidential speech, the lives our classmates lived, and the reflections of historians and scholars — stimulate well-informed, civil, serious discussions and renewed civic engagement, then we have done what we set out to do.

On April 9, 1963, President Kennedy issued a presidential proclamation that made Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. In that proclamation, Kennedy stated that Churchill “… mobilized the English Language and sent it into battle.” In the spirit of John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, in our own modest efforts to bring light to darkness, we send our words into the breach. — Ted Nelson, Roger Mills

“I look forward to an America, which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well.”

— President Kennedy at Amherst College

JFK: The Last Speech

Edited by neil bicknell, roger mills and jan worth-nelson.

NOTE FROM CULLEN MURPHY: Chair of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College

FOREWARD: “Poetry and Politics” — Biddy Martin, President of Amherst College

INTRODUCTION: Ted Nelson, ’64, Roger Mills, ’64, and Reunion ’64

PART 1: Fall 1963 on Campus.

CHAPTER 1: One Fall Day: Frost and Kennedy — Roger Mills, ’64

CHAPTER 2: Robert Frost: The Poet as Educator — Paul Dimond, ’66 and Roger Mills, ’64

CHAPTER 3: Those Who Were There — Vignettes

Cheering Loudly, Fearing Quietly — James T. Giles, ’64

The Vigil Outside Kirby — Mitch Meisner, ’64

Noises Off — Chatland Whitmore, ’64

The President and the Poet — Mark J. Sandler, ’64

Kennedy Has Been Shot — Robert Knox, ’64

Communal Guilt? — David Pearle, ’64

Do the Work He Couldn’t Complete — Rip Sparks, ’64

CHAPTER 4: Kennedy on Campus

The Convocation Address — John F. Kennedy, October 26,1963

The President’s Remarks at the Library Groundbreaking

Frost and Stone: The Convocation Address — Archibald Macleish

President Plimpton’s Address to the College

Poetry, Stalinism, and the Cuban Missile Crisis — Stewart L. Udall

JFK’S HANDWRITTEN EDITS to the Speech Drafted by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

CHAPTER 5: Annotated Timeline — Rip Sparks, ’64

PART 2: Doing the Work He Couldn’t Complete.

CHAPTER 6: The Life of an Activist — Ted Nelson, ’64

CHAPTER 7: Truth to Power — Steve Downs, ’64

CHAPTER 8: Given to Me — Gene Palumbo, ’64

CHAPTER 9: “With Privilege Goes Responsibility” — George Wanlass, ’64

CHAPTER 10: Carrying the Torch — Vignettes

My Year in Vietnam with MILPHAP Team 20 — Thomas P. Jacobs, ’64

From Art History to Biomedical Research — Doug Lowy, ’64

A Continuing Journey –Pat Deleon, ’64

Kennedy, the Liberal Arts, and My Path — Paul Stern, ’64

You Go to Amherst College. Period. — Stephen Eaton Smith, ’64

Late Bloomer — Don Lombardi, ’64

Meeting Kennedy’s Challenge in the Private Sector — Steve Drotter, ’64

Privilege and Responsibility — Jesse Brill, ’64

“The World We Inherited; The World We Will Bequeath” and What We Can Do About It — Charles Stover, ’64

Part 3: Looking Backward with pride … forward with hope.

CHAPTER 11: The President and the Poet

On Arts and Politics — Joseph Kennedy III

Frost and Kennedy on Poetry and Power in a Democracy — Robert Benedetti, ’64

A Witness to History Robert Frost and Jack Kennedy, Then and Now — Paul Dimond, ’66

CHAPTER 12: A Lover’s Quarrel

Robert Frost and the Nature of New England — Jay Parini

Poetry, Power and High School English — David Stringer, ’64

The Cultural Implications of Post-1970 Art: End of The Enlightenment? — Bradford R. Collins, ’64 (See with art referenced)

CHAPTER 13: Lifting the Human Spirit

When a President Dared to Go to Amherst — Nicholas Zeppos

Society’s Questioner — Robert Redford

The Touchstone of Our Judgment — Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein

CHAPTER 14: Aspirational Leadership

The World of Thought and the Seat of Power: The Leadership of John F. Kennedy — Jon Meacham

The Personal Presidency: John F. Kennedy’s Legacy — Mickey Edwards

My Dream for America: A New Generation of Leadership — Steven Olikara

CHAPTER 15: “A College Such as This”

What is the Earthly Use of a Liberal Arts Education?– Fareed Zakaria

Liberal Arts: The Acquisition of Languages– Mark J. Sandler, ’64

Addressing Inequality: Education for the Information Age– Joseph Stiglitz, ’64

Answering President Kennedy’s Challenge — Dakota Foster, ’18

AFTERWORD: The Solace from Well-Chosen Words — Bestor Cram

APPENDIX A: Discussion Questions on Kennedy, Frost and Civic Engagement

APPENDIX B: Peace Corps Service — Amherst Class of 1964

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A golden age of poetry and power

Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour..

—Robert Frost, “Dedication”

The people of this countryside, may forget in ordinary human course what anyone says on this occasion, but they will remember for many, many years that a young and gallant president of the United States, with the weight of history heavy upon his shoulders, somehow found time to come to our small corner of the world to talk of books and men and learning.

—Archibald MacLeish  

An essential quality of the learned then is generosity of the soul, for without it, knowledge becomes a tool for control and even oppression.

— Farzam Arbab, BA (physics) magna cum laude Amherst, 1964; PhD (elementary particle physics) University of California, Berkley, 1968: DSc (hon), Amherst, 1989. Knowledge and Civilization

Photo Credits:

1964 Classmates at 50th Reunion. Judy Bicknell photo.

Robert Frost at the Podium. Courtesy of University of Arizona Libraries, Stewart L. Udall Papers, az 372, box 105, with permission of the Robert Frost Estate.

JFK at Convocation. Courtesy of the Amherst College Archives and Speial Collections, Amherst College Library

JFK’s abiding legacy

• November 20, 2023

Fredrik Logevall

• Themes: America, American Democracy, Geopolitics, History

Through his visionary leadership, inspired rhetoric, and willingness to compromise, John F. Kennedy summoned the narrative of American hope, his most powerful and enduring legacy.

Six decades have passed since the assassination of America’s 35 th president, John F. Kennedy , as his motorcade crept slowly along Elm Street, beneath the Texas Schoolbook Depository, in Dallas, on a sunny fall day in November 1963. Yet he remains an outsized persona, not only in the United States but abroad, a man known universally by his initials, more remembered than all but a small number of twentieth-century world leaders.

Born in 1917, during one world war, and at the dawn of the so-called American Century, he came of age in a second, then rose all the way to the presidency, only to be cut down at forty-six, while leading a United States that stood at the apex of its power. He was a man of privilege and affluence who endured chronic ill health and pain as well as colossal personal tragedy, and whose storybook life captivated millions of people – not merely in the United States but overseas, not merely in death but in life.

Known for his handsome looks, cool and elegant demeanour, and continuous womanising, Kennedy was gifted and flawed, as a politician and as a person, and his thousand days in the White House witnessed mistakes as well as successes. But through his captivating leadership and inspirational rhetoric he elevated Americans’ belief in the capacity of politics to solve big problems and speak to society’s highest aspirations, while in foreign affairs he showed it was possible to move from sharp hostility toward the Soviet Union to coexistence. The American public responded. By the middle of 1963, close to 60 per cent of Americans claimed that they had voted for Kennedy in 1960, although only 49.7 per cent had in fact done so. After his death, his landslide grew to 65 per cent. Kennedy’s average approval rating of 70 per cent while in office puts him at the top among post-Second World War US presidents, and later generations would rate his performance higher still.

What explains the enduring hold of John F. Kennedy’s legacy, his lasting appeal? Does it have something to do with his youthful and dignified bearing, his handsome looks? Yes, in part. What about the glamour of his White House, his beautiful family? That too matters, as does his inspirational speechmaking. And no doubt he retains a hold on Americans partly because of the timing and nature of his death, which was captured on film and plays on an endless loop in our minds. He is forever in his mid-forties, seemingly in the prime of life.

All those things matter. But as I research and write a two-volume study of the man and his times, I’m increasingly convinced that, more than anything, it was Kennedy’s enduring faith in his nation and its brand of democratic politics that explains most fully his abiding legacy.

From a young age, John F. Kennedy was fascinated by the problems of democratic leadership in politics. The interest was there in his undergraduate papers at Harvard as well as in his senior thesis, which was published as a book, Why England Slept , just a few weeks after his graduation in 1940, when he was twenty-three. The animating question of the study was why Britain was so poorly prepared when war broke out in 1939. To read the book is to see that its young author is fascinated by the challenges of leadership, and the dilemmas that confront officials who seek to do what is required of them while not alienating their temperamental constituents. It’s a theme Kennedy would return to in a later book, Profiles in Courage , and a conundrum he would confront to the end of his days.

Let us linger a bit on Profiles in Courage , which appeared in 1956 and featured profiles of eight US senators who showed notable courage and risked their careers in taking political stances unpopular with their constituents, their parties, and in some cases their regions. Here, the challenges of democratic politics are front and centre. The introductory chapter is notable, not least for its current resonance. Its title is ‘Courage and Politics’, but, more than anything, the chapter argues for the vital importance in a democracy of political compromise, of having ‘the sense of things possible’. To condemn all compromise as immoral is shortsighted, Kennedy insists, for decisions of public policy often involve difficult choices, often means choosing from a menu of lousy options:

The fanatics and extremists and even those conscientiously devoted to hard and fast principles are always disappointed at the failure of their government to rush to implement all of their principles and to denounce those of their opponents. [But] some of my colleagues who are criticized today for lack of forthright principles—or who are looked upon with scornful eyes as compromising ‘politicians’—are simply engaged in the art of conciliating, balancing, and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion, an art essential to keeping our nation united and our Government to function. Their consciences may direct them from time to time to make a more rigid stand for principle—but their intellects tell them that a fair or poor bill is better than no bill at all, and that only through the give-and-take of compromise will any bill receive the successive approval of the Senate, the House, the President and the nation.

The concluding chapter returns to these broader themes. It matters to us today for what it says about Kennedy’s view of political leadership, and for serving as a kind of eternal antidote to the cynicism about politics and politicians that periodically courses through American political discourse. Here, Kennedy extols both compromise and courage (the courage he most favours is that of moderates who resist extremists). At the same time, he stresses that his book is not intended to laud independence for the sake of independence, or to suggest that there is on every issue a right side and a wrong side. ‘On the contrary,’ he writes, ‘I share the feelings expressed by Prime Minister Melbourne, who, when irritated by the criticism of the then youthful historian T.B. Macaulay, remarked that he would like to be as sure of anything as Macaulay seemed to be of everything.’

He then quotes Abraham Lincoln: ‘There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of Government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.’

Here Kennedy may have been influenced by a conversation he had around the time of the publication of Profiles with his longtime British friend David Ormsby-Gore . From his reading of American history, Kennedy told the Englishman, he had drawn the lessons that there were usually two sides to every serious political problem. The radicals of the right and the left, in their constant demand for simple solutions, didn’t grasp this fundamental point. ‘Now this didn’t prevent him being capable of taking decisions,’ Ormsby-Gore later said of the conversation, ‘but it did always prevent him saying, “I know that I have got nothing but right on my side and the other side is entirely wrong” and he never would adopt that attitude. He said that one of the sad things in life, particularly if you were a politician, was that you discovered that the other side really had a very good case. He was most unpartisan in that way.’

In divisive times, such as the one the United States is living through today, this emphasis on the need for compromise is often derided, mistakenly, as naïve. On the contrary, the naïve view is the one that dismisses the need for bargaining with opponents, the need for compromise based on mutual concessions. Neither then nor later was Kennedy above bare-knuckle politics or partisan sparring, but he understood that honest bargaining was necessary to a well-functioning democracy, and that civility in the public realm prevented dehumanisation and helped Americans to see political opponents as adversaries, not enemies. He understood that dignity –  acting in a dignified manner and treating others appropriate to their dignity – is a core value of democracy.

Closely associated with Kennedy’s interest in the demands of democratic leadership was his frequent exhortation to Americans to commit themselves to a life of public service. As he put it in his 1961 Inaugural Address: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.’ This was no new idea in his mind; it had been drilled into him at Choate, his prep school alma mater. Even before that, his parents had implemented in their nine children the importance of thinking beyond oneself, of doing something for the greater good. When, in 1946, Kennedy returned to Choate to give a lecture, he urged the students to be engaged citizens and to serve their country in some way. On the stump that year, in his maiden election campaign, he fleshed out the argument, sounding notes that seem especially resonant in our own time. Beware lazy cynicism about politics and politicians, the skinny young candidate implored audiences, for the survival of democracy depended on having an informed and engaged citizenry, committed to reasoned discourse and accepting of good-faith bargaining between the parties. In that campaign and in his later ones, including in his run for the White House, Kennedy employed the language of empathy, emphasising Americans’ common goals and common fate as a people, and he embodied a kind of patriotism that doesn’t transcend partisanship, but enriches partisan struggle, making it always an invitation to others to join you.

It’s a powerful political philosophy, one that has lost none of its salience in the ensuing years. And though it cannot be said that Kennedy ranks among America’s great presidents, alongside Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt – he didn’t live long enough, didn’t accomplish enough – one feels he had the capacity for greatness. Through his visionary leadership and inspired rhetoric, he summoned the narrative of American hope, as he challenged people to believe in a better society at home while embracing the nation’s leadership position abroad. He approached his job as president with earnest resoluteness – a fundamental test of political leadership. He had the discipline and maturity to discern matters that transcended self-interest, and he was able and willing to set aside immature ego and emotionalism and to act with prudence and self-restraint. Beneath all the style and glamour, Kennedy was basically a serious man on a serious mission.

He was at once a realist and an idealist. Like all philosophic liberals – whether on the right side of the political spectrum or the left – he understood that people have selfish interests, but he believed in democracy and robust conversation because he had faith in the capacity of people to pursue their own lives, to respect and be mindful of people unlike themselves, to keep society progressing. In other words, Kennedy embodied what my colleague James Kloppenberg in his book Toward Democracy refers to as an ‘ethic of reciprocity’ – a mutual respect, a recognition and tolerance for one another, even if we do not all share the same moral commitments. Politically, Kloppenberg writes, it means the willingness to accept defeat, to allow your worst enemies to govern if they win an election.

Kennedy reminds us that there was an age, not so long ago, when it was possible to believe that politics could speak to society’s moral yearnings and be harnessed to its highest aspirations, when it was possible to think in terms of the social whole, of the public good, of the need to emphasise what Americans had in common over what set them apart.

Whether that message can work in today’s world is one of the crucial questions of our time. No doubt the United States is different today than it was sixty years ago. Voters are more cynical, more suspicious about politics, about institutions, more likely to question one another’s motives. And the media environment is different too – the nation now has a much less deferential press corps, and an incredible expansion of opinion-makers and influencers in which everyone weighs in with little accounting of their expertise or their credibility.

Imagine if one of the legendary Kennedy press conferences were held today. The instant he was off the air, zealous partisans would be debating and disputing every word and undoing what he attempted to convey directly to the public. Social media would be afire with haters and sceptics and trolls.

We don’t know how JFK would have navigated any of that. He surely would have felt frustrated and irritated by it. But he would have been as likely as anyone to cut through it, to appeal to a fundamental sense of decency and fairness that didn’t persuade everyone but did carry along a great many people, both at the time and since. As much as anyone, Kennedy could have persuaded the mass of his compatriots that, through engagement and good will, we can make real and lasting connections across differences, that society is not a zero-sum war, but a conversation and a negotiation. He could have convinced them that, in the house of democracy, there can be no enemies, and that when politicians treat each other as enemies, honest bargaining becomes impossible, and debate within the halls of power in Washington becomes as venomously personal as it is politically meaningless.

Finally, a Kennedy alive today would insist upon another essential ingredient of democratic governance: rational, fact-based discourse. One can have one’s own view about why the facts are the way they are, but all must agree on the facts if there’s going to be a sensible conversation about problems and how to solve them. Consider here Kennedy’s remarks in a speech planned for the Dallas Trade Mart on 22 November 1963, a destination he never reached:

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality, and the plausible with the possible, will gain popular ascendancy, and with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. We cannot expect… that everyone will talk sense to the American people, but we can hope that fewer people will listen to this nonsense.

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People are dunking on JFK's half-assed Harvard admission essay in the wake of the Supreme Court axing affirmative action

• The Supreme Court ruled to overturn race-based affirmative action on Thursday.
• After the ruling, many focused on John F. Kennedy's underwhelming 1935 Harvard admission essay.
• People painted Kennedy as a classic legacy admission — a system that exists in some form today.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action , the essay John F. Kennedy wrote in 1935 emerged online as a topic of discussion — and derision.

The essay, which was first published by The Washington Post in 2013, reappeared on social media on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional.

Affirmative action — giving additional weight to applicants from disadvantaged demographics — had been upheld for four decades and helped minority groups access elite institutions like Harvard.

When Kennedy applied there, aged 17, the process was nowhere near as rigorous, with an application form just three pages long, per The Post.

Kennedy did not appear to be trying very hard to impress the school, other than name-dropping his rich father.

"The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university," the essay read. 

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"I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a 'Harvard man' is an enviable distinction and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain," it added. That was it.

—Rebecca Brenner Graham, PhD (@TheOtherRBG) June 29, 2023

The short essay shocked people on social media, who pointed out that the mention of Kennedy's father — a wealthy businessman who graduated from Harvard in 1912 — was most likely what got him into the Ivy League. 

One person jokingly tweeted : "Getting into Harvard: 1) be a person of color in the top 20 of every student in America, with SATs and recommendation from a state senator. 2) have Robert Kennedy be your dad, write something about being a Harvard man on a cocktail napkin, and transcribe it to your application."

Although Kennedy's example was extreme and unlikely to cut muster today, US colleges do explicitly favor applicants whose parents went there, via the legacy system.

Commentators — including President Joe Biden — on Thursday noted that the legacy system remained untouched by the court ruling.

The system, they complained, left colleges unable to shape their decisions on grounds or race, but able to do so based on applicants' parents, who are likely to already be privileged thesmelves, and probably white.

Kennedy started his degree in 1936 and graduated cum laude in 1940 with a Bachelor of Arts in government. He became America's 35th president around 20 years later.

Harvard admissions have become extremely competitive in the years since Kennedy applied.

In 1935, a total of 7,870 students were admitted to Harvard, according to a Harvard Crimson article at the time.

Only 1,984 people were admitted into the class of 2026, making the admission rate just 3%, according to the Ivy League's website. 

The Supreme Court's ruling on Thursday was criticized by many, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who argued in a dissenting opinion that it failed to understand the critical role race plays in society.

A group of Harvard University administrators  said in a statement  that the school would "continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world."

• Main content

The Modern Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration

When John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, African Americans faced significant discrimination in the United States. Throughout much of the South they were denied the right to vote, barred from public facilities, subjected to violence including lynching, and could not expect justice from the courts. In the North, Black Americans also faced discrimination in housing, employment, education, and many other areas.

Progress and Protests: 1954-1960

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Many southern political leaders invoked the tenth amendment or “states’ rights” to justify segregation and claimed the desegregation decision violated the rights of states to manage their systems of public education. They responded with defiance, legal challenges, delays, or token compliance. As a result, school desegregation proceeded very slowly. By the end of the 1950s, fewer than 10 percent of Black children in the South were attending integrated schools.

The pace of civil rights protests rose sharply in response to the Supreme Court's decision. Martin Luther King Jr. led a boycott that ended segregated busing in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1957, National Guard troops under orders from President Dwight D. Eisenhower enforced the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. But, even after Little Rock, school integration was painfully slow, and segregation in general remained largely untouched.

In February 1960, four Black college students sat down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked to be served. They refused to leave their seats after being denied service. Within days, more than 50 students had volunteered to continue the sit-in, and within weeks the movement had spread to other college campuses. Sit‑ins and other protests swept across the South in early 1960, touching more than 65 cities in 12 states. Roughly 50,000 young people joined the protests that year.

The Election of 1960

By the 1960 presidential campaign, civil rights had emerged as a crucial issue. Just a few weeks before the election, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested while leading a protest in Atlanta, Georgia. John Kennedy phoned his wife, Coretta Scott King to express his concern, while a call from Robert Kennedy to the judge helped secure her husband's safe release. The Kennedys' personal intervention led to a public endorsement by Martin Luther King Sr., the influential father of the civil rights leader. The publicizing of this endorsement, combined with other campaign efforts, contributed to increased support among Black voters for Kennedy.

Across the nation, almost 70 percent of African Americans voted for Kennedy, and these votes provided the winning edge in several key states. When President Kennedy took office in January 1961, African Americans had high expectations for the new administration.

But Kennedy's narrow election victory and small working margin in Congress contributed to his cautious navigation of civil rights issues. He was reluctant to lose southern support for legislation on many fronts by pushing too hard on civil rights legislation. Instead, encouraged by staff, he appointed unprecedented numbers of African Americans to high-level positions in the administration and strengthened the Civil Rights Commission. He spoke out in favor of school desegregation, praised a number of cities for integrating their schools, and put Vice President Lyndon Johnson in charge of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Attorney General Robert Kennedy turned his attention to voting rights, initiating five times the number of suits brought during the previous administration.

The Freedom Rides

President Kennedy may have been reluctant to push ahead with civil rights legislation, but millions of African Americans forged ahead. Eventually, the administration was compelled to act.

For decades, seating on buses in the South had been segregated, along with bus station waiting rooms, rest rooms, and restaurants. In May 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), led by James Farmer, organized integrated Freedom Rides to defy segregation in interstate transportation. Freedom Riders were arrested in North Carolina and beaten in South Carolina. In Alabama, a bus was burned, and the riders attacked with baseball bats and tire irons. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent 400 federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and urged the Interstate Commerce Commission to order the desegregation of interstate travel.

James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss

In 1962, James H. Meredith Jr., an African American Air Force veteran, applied for admission to the all-white University of Mississippi, known as "Ole Miss." He attempted to register four times without success.

Long telephone conversations between the president, the attorney general, and Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett failed to produce a solution. When federal marshals accompanied Meredith to campus in another attempt to register for classes, rioting erupted by white protesters. Two people died and dozens were injured. President Kennedy mobilized the National Guard and sent federal troops to the campus. Meredith registered the next day and attended his first class. This was the first step in ending segregation at the University of Mississippi.

Martin Luther King Jr., Bull Connor, and the Demonstrations in Birmingham

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth launched a campaign of mass protests in Birmingham, Alabama, which King called the most segregated city in America. Initially, the demonstrations had little impact. Then, on Good Friday, King was arrested and spent a week behind bars, where he wrote one of his most famous meditations on racial injustice and civil disobedience, "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Meanwhile, James Bevel, another organizer of the Birmingham Campaign, rallied Black youths to march in the streets at the beginning of May. Birmingham City Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor used police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses to put down the peaceful demonstrations. Nearly a thousand young people were arrested. The violence was broadcast on television to the nation and the world.

Invoking federal authority, President Kennedy sent several thousand troops to an Alabama air base, and his administration responded by speeding up the drafting of a comprehensive civil rights bill.

Integrating the University of Alabama

Governor George Wallace had vowed at his inauguration to defend "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever." In June 1963, he upheld his promise to "stand in the schoolhouse door" to prevent two Black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama. To protect the students and secure their admission, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. And on the evening of June 11, the president addressed the nation.

Kennedy defined the civil rights crisis as moral, as well as constitutional and legal. He announced that major civil rights legislation would be submitted to the Congress to guarantee equal access to public facilities, to end segregation in education, and to provide federal protection of the right to vote. A few hours later, Medgar Evers, the best-known civil rights activist in Mississippi and a field officer in the NAACP, was murdered outside his home.

The March on Washington

On August 28,1963, an interracial and interfaith crowd of more than 250,000 Americans demonstrated for social and economic justice in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Key civil rights figures led the march including A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, Whitney Young, and John Lewis. The most memorable moment came when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. President Kennedy, concerned about the potential impact of the March on his pending civil rights legislation, initially did not support the event. But, after the successful conclusion of the March, he invited civil rights leaders to the White House where they discussed the need for bi-partisan support of civil rights legislation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

During the summer and fall of 1963, the Kennedy administration worked to build bi-partisan support for the legislation. In late fall, the comprehensive civil rights bill cleared several hurdles in Congress and won the endorsement of House and Senate Republican leaders. It was not passed, however, before November 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. The bill was left in the hands of Lyndon B. Johnson. Before becoming vice president, Johnson had served more than two decades in Congress as a congressman and senator from Texas. He used his substantial political acumen, the assistance of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department, and the outpouring of emotion after President Kennedy’s assassination to generate passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Provisions of the legislation included: (1) protecting African Americans against discrimination in voter qualification tests; (2) outlawing discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; (3) authorizing the US Attorney General's Office to file legal suits to enforce desegregation in public schools; (4) authorizing the withdrawal of federal funds from programs practicing discrimination; and (5) outlawing discrimination in employment in any business exceeding 25 people and creating an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to review complaints.

Passed on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was a crucial step in achieving the civil rights movement's initial goal: full legal equality. Another milestone – the Voting Rights Act -- was passed in 1965. But more work has remained to be done. Although passage of these laws were significant achievements in the 1960s, discriminatory practices in many areas continue as civil rights activists strive for equality in the 21st century.

Reimagining Design with Nature: ecological urbanism in Moscow

• Reflective Essay
• Published: 10 September 2019
• Volume 1 , pages 233–247, ( 2019 )

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• Brian Mark Evans   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1420-1682 1  

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The twenty-first century is the era when populations of cities will exceed rural communities for the first time in human history. The population growth of cities in many countries, including those in transition from planned to market economies, is putting considerable strain on ecological and natural resources. This paper examines four central issues: (a) the challenges and opportunities presented through working in jurisdictions where there are no official or established methods in place to guide regional, ecological and landscape planning and design; (b) the experience of the author’s practice—Gillespies LLP—in addressing these challenges using techniques and methods inspired by McHarg in Design with Nature in the Russian Federation in the first decade of the twenty-first century; (c) the augmentation of methods derived from Design with Nature in reference to innovations in technology since its publication and the contribution that the art of landscape painters can make to landscape analysis and interpretation; and (d) the application of this experience to the international competition and colloquium for the expansion of Moscow. The text concludes with a comment on how the application of this learning and methodological development to landscape and ecological planning and design was judged to be a central tenant of the winning design. Finally, a concluding section reflects on lessons learned and conclusions drawn.

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The politics of designing with nature: reflections from New Orleans and Dhaka

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The landscape team from Gillespies Glasgow Studio (Steve Nelson, Graeme Pert, Joanne Walker, Rory Wilson and Chris Swan) led by the author and all our collaborators in the Capital Cities Planning Group.

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O.J. Simpson could have done so much to advance others, but he only cared about himself

O.J. Simpson could have been on a pedestal as a man who stood for something bigger than himself. In the end he died much as he had lived: arrogant, self-obsessed, without regard for those around him.

• Daryl A. Carter is associate dean, director, and professor of history at East Tennessee State University.

On April 10, O.J. Simpson died surrounded by his family at the age of 76. The cause was prostate cancer. It marked the end of a long and turbulent life marked by poverty, survival, riches, violence, murder, and stardom.

The Juice, as he was known in the decades before a civil jury said he murdered his ex-wife and her friend, was a Heisman Trophy winner, Hall of Fame running back for USC and the Buffalo Bills, and a father to five children.

He was arguably the first crossover athlete of the 20 th century. Before Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan there was O.J. The Juice was handsome, charismatic, and well-suited to be a star.

O.J.’s wholesome public image contrasted with his real personality

Today, it is hard to imagine just how popular and well-liked O.J. Simpson was before that horrible night in June 1994.

He became a national star at the University of Southern California. Beginning in the 1970s Simpson was a corporate pitchman for General Motors, Chevrolet, Sports Illustrated , drink companies, Schick razors, and, most famously, Hertz Rental Cars.

The media work as a sports analyst and endorsements created a public image which often was at odds with the private reality. In numerous books, documentaries and interviews with people who knew him, a disturbing portrait of a vainglorious, womanizing, and, at times, violent man emerged.

There were allegations he was violent toward his first wife. In 1989, he was arrested for abusing his second wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. In fact, his inability to handle rejection and his need to control and dominate his ex-wife led him to be accused of murdering her and Ronald Goldman in June 1994. He was acquitted in the criminal trial in 1995.

O.J. Simpson’s violent proclivities cannot be forgotten. But there is another side of this story. One which also deserves consideration if we are to accurately consider the totality of his life.

Simpson wanted to be above the Civil Rights movement, not fight for others

Let’s be honest: in many ways O.J. Simpson was not a likeable person. But he was a human being. Now it is appropriate to consider other parts of his life. O.J.’s stated desire to not be involved in the great Civil Rights struggle of his early adulthood remain jarring more than a half century later.

He embraced infamous FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and knowingly played into the falsity known as colorblindness. On several occasions he spoke about his views on civil rights, his reticence to get involved and how others may have made mistakes by joining the fight for justice. O.J.’s moral failure to recognize the pressing issues of the day spoke volumes.

The desire for money, status, and white acceptance overrode the call for first class citizenship for Black Americans . He refused to join other Black athletes to protest the mistreatment and abuse Black Americans were subjected to in the United States in the late 1960s.

Sociologist Harry Edwards recalled in the landmark documentary, “OJ: Made in America,” asking Simpson to join the others, in which Simpson replied “’I’m not black, I am OJ.’” In short, O.J. Simpson was not a race man.

O.J.’s lack of appreciation for the moral imperative of civil rights reflected his selfishness and cold realism regarding race relations in the United States and was designed to enhance his profile, line his pockets and aligned himself with people who would allow him to get as far away from his humble beginnings and race as humanly possible.

Daryl A. Carter, Ph.D., is associate dean, director, and professor of history at East Tennessee State University.

Moscow, Russia – Architectural Splendor at the Heart of Eurasia

Moscow, Russia – Most Populated Cities in the World

Moscow, the capital city of Russia, stands as an architectural testament to the country’s rich history and cultural legacy. This article explores the architectural landscape of Moscow, uncovering its unique blend of historical monuments, Soviet-era structures, and contemporary designs that define this vibrant metropolis.

Population Dynamics of Moscow

From medieval roots to megacity.

Moscow, with a population exceeding 12 million, has evolved from its medieval roots into a bustling megacity. The city’s demographic dynamism reflects its historical significance as a political, economic, and cultural center. Moscow’s urban growth presents challenges and opportunities for architects and urban planners, requiring a delicate balance between preservation and modernization.

Architectural Diversity in Moscow

Kremlin, red square, and the modern skyline.

Moscow’s architectural diversity is a harmonious blend of historical landmarks and contemporary structures. The iconic Kremlin, with its cathedrals and palaces, dominates the cityscape, while the neighboring Red Square provides a historical focal point. Beyond the historical core, Moscow’s skyline is adorned with modern skyscrapers like the Moscow International Business Center, symbolizing the city’s economic and architectural evolution.

Sustainable Architecture Initiatives

Green innovations amidst urban density.

As Moscow confronts environmental challenges and urban density, architects have championed sustainable solutions. Green building practices, energy-efficient designs, and eco-friendly materials are integral to Moscow’s architectural discourse. The city’s commitment to sustainability is evident in projects like Zaryadye Park, a green oasis in the heart of the city.

Urban Planning and Zoning Strategies

Preserving heritage amidst modernization.

Moscow’s urban planning endeavors to preserve its historical heritage while accommodating modern developments. The preservation of architectural gems like St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Pushkin Museum coexists with contemporary urban projects such as the Moscow City residential complexes. Urban planners in Moscow face the challenge of balancing the demands of a growing population with the need to protect the city’s cultural legacy.

Resilience in the Face of Urban Challenges

Adaptable architecture for harsh climates.

Moscow’s architectural resilience is tested by the city’s harsh climate and urban challenges. Architects prioritize designs that can withstand extreme temperatures and adapt to the evolving urban landscape. The use of durable materials and innovative construction techniques showcases Moscow’s commitment to architectural adaptability.

Technological Integration in Moscow’s Architecture

Smart city initiatives and futuristic designs.

Moscow’s architectural landscape seamlessly integrates cutting-edge technology for enhanced urban living. Smart city initiatives, digital infrastructure, and futuristic designs like the Moscow Central Diameters (MCD) showcase the city’s commitment to technological innovation. Moscow positions itself as a global hub for modern architectural practices, leveraging technology to improve efficiency and sustainability.

Architectural Icons of Moscow

Kremlin and red square.

The Kremlin and Red Square, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, symbolize Moscow’s historical and political significance. The architectural ensemble, including the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral and the State Historical Museum, reflects Russia’s cultural and religious heritage.

Moscow International Business Center (Moscow City)

Moscow City, with its futuristic skyscrapers, represents the city’s economic prowess and modern aesthetic. The complex includes iconic structures like the Federation Tower and Mercury City Tower, showcasing Moscow’s status as a global financial and architectural hub.

Moscow’s Future Architectural Landscape

As Moscow continues to evolve, the city’s architectural landscape is poised for further transformation. Urban planners and architects are exploring innovative solutions to accommodate the growing population while preserving the city’s unique identity. Moscow’s commitment to sustainable practices, technological integration, and resilient design will shape its architectural future.

In conclusion, Moscow, Russia, stands as a city where architectural marvels narrate the story of a nation’s history and progress. From medieval fortifications to contemporary skyscrapers, Moscow’s architectural landscape is a testament to its resilience and adaptability. As the city looks toward the future, its architectural canvas promises to be a captivating blend of tradition, modernity, and technological innovation at the heart of Eurasia.

Rethinking The Future (RTF) is a Global Platform for Architecture and Design. RTF through more than 100 countries around the world provides an interactive platform of highest standard acknowledging the projects among creative and influential industry professionals.

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Russian Court Orders Prominent Human Rights Group to Shut

The Supreme Court ruled that Memorial International, which chronicled political repression in Russia, must be liquidated.

By Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew E. Kramer

MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the nation’s most prominent human rights organization must close, signaling President Vladimir V. Putin’s longstanding determination to control the narrative of some of the most painful and repressive chapters of Russian history.

The court ordered the liquidation of Memorial International, which chronicled the harrowing persecutions in the infamous Stalin-era labor camps in an effort to preserve the memory of its victims. The group, founded by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents more than three decades ago, became a symbol of the country’s emerging democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The decision comes after a year of broad crackdown on opposition in Russia as the Kremlin moved aggressively to stifle dissent — in the news media, in religious groups, on social networks and especially among activists and political opponents, hundreds of whom have been harassed, jailed or forced into exile.

Shutting down Memorial is also another step in Mr. Putin’s effort to recast Russia’s legacy as a series of glorious accomplishments and soften the image of the often-brutal Soviet regime. While the state opened a comprehensive Gulag history museum in Moscow and Mr. Putin laid flowers at a new monument to the victims of Soviet repression, the increasingly emboldened Kremlin has moved aggressively to remove alternative interpretations of Russian history by organizations it does not control.

In particular Mr. Putin is eager to convince Russians that their country is surrounded by enemies who wish to oversee its demise, a tack he has taken recently in demanding that NATO guarantee it will not expand farther eastward toward Russia. As such, the Kremlin wants the Russian public to focus on foreign foes instead of crimes committed by homegrown dictators.

In recent years, Mr. Putin has shown a keen interest in shaping interpretation of Russia’s history, publishing his views in lengthy articles about the Soviet Union’s key contribution to the victory over Nazism and “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” His viewpoint includes a renunciation of the democratic steps taken in the 1990s, which included reforms, self-criticism and social and economic upheaval.

The hearing drew dozens of protesters outside the courthouse, and afterward families of those affected by Stalins’ repressions and opposition figures expressed outrage, pointing to the deepening level of repression under Mr. Putin.

Ilya Miklashevsky, 65, whose father and grandfather were both imprisoned in the gulag, said Memorial’s closure represents “a new step downward,” adding, “the country is sleepily moving downhill.”

Sergei Mitrokhin, a Russian opposition politician, said that Memorial was “the last barrier on the way to complete Stalinization of the society and state.”

“What we have now is still lite Stalinism,” he said, speaking on Ekho Moskvy, a radio station. “I am afraid it can turn way worse. It is a tragedy for our country.”

Memorial International oversees an archive of victims of Soviet persecution, mostly in the era of the gulags, the forced labor camps where Russians were imprisoned in harsh, debilitating conditions. Its database contains more than three million names — no more than a quarter of all victims, according to the organization’s estimates.

Memorial’s lawyers have dismissed all of the accusations against the group as unfounded and called its persecution “politically motivated.” In a statement , Memorial said that its members were intent on “finding legal ways” to continue their work.

In Washington, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States condemned the decision to close Memorial, which he called “one of Russia’s oldest and most respected historical and human rights organizations.”

Jan Z. Raczynski, chairman of the board of Memorial International, said that the group intended to appeal the ruling and that it would be allowed to operate for at least a month while the appeal was pending. It is unclear what will happen to Memorial’s archive and other physical items, including the ones it displays in a subterranean Moscow museum.

In a separate hearing on Wednesday, the Moscow City Court will rule on whether to shut down Memorial’s Human Rights Center, which compiles a list of current political prisoners in Russia. The center is accused of “justifying terrorist activities” by including members of banned religious organizations on the list.

The list includes Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader, who was poisoned in a clandestine operation widely believed to have been organized by the Russian special services. In Siberia on Tuesday, the authorities raided the homes of two regional heads of Mr. Navalny’s political movement, branded as “extremist” by a Russian court in June.

Mr. Raczynski said that the Russian authorities were seeking to whitewash Soviet history, and that the prosecutor had directly addressed historical issues in arguments before the Supreme Court, though the case was ostensibly about violation of the foreign agent law.

The legal pressure, he said, was intended to shut both Memorial’s historical research into Soviet repressions and current human rights advocacy. The two branches of the group’s work are related, he said, and both are now “seen as undermining the authority of the government.”

Criticism of Soviet policies, he said, runs counter to the “current government’s propagandistic concept that, ‘our government was always good.’”

“There’s an old, banal formula that whoever doesn’t know the past is doomed to repeat it,” Mr. Raczynski said. “The situation of the past decade shows we are moving in that direction.”

In another signal of the state’s efforts to block Memorial, a Russian court on Monday extended the term of Yuri Dmitriev, a historian who chaired the group’s regional office in Karelia, to 15 years from 13. Mr. Dmitriev, who discovered mass graves resulting from Stalin’s brutalities, was convicted of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, a charge he denied.

The judge’s ruling on Tuesday cited what it said were repeated violations of the foreign agents law. Passed in 2012, the measure has been criticized by the country’s opposition as a vehicle intended by the Russian state to stifle all dissent. It orders all organizations that receive foreign funding and engage in loosely defined political activity to label themselves as “foreign agents,” a designation that carries the stigma of being on the payroll of foreign governments.

The law imposes onerous requirements on those designated, including extensive financial disclosures. Memorial’s leaders say they have made every effort to comply with the requirements even though they regard the law as unconstitutional.

Yelena Zhemkova, Memorial’s executive director, said that mistakes are possible in its gargantuan task of keeping a registry of victims, but that they are “always corrected.”

“What Memorial does represents 33 years of hard work of very many people,” Ms. Zhemkova told the court. “We work for the benefit of our people and our country.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Aleksei Zhafyarov, the prosecutor, said Memorial only “speculated on the topic of political repressions” but that in reality it tried to portray the Soviet Union as “a terrorist state” and aimed to “rehabilitate Nazi criminals.”

Mr. Zhafyarov’s statements echoed earlier comments by Mr. Putin, who called Memorial “one of the most reputable organizations” during a meeting with his human rights council this month, but also accused it of glorifying Holocaust perpetrators.

Mr. Raczynski, the chairman of Memorial’s board, said the state’s arguments were specious.

“The general prosecutor said we try to portray the Soviet Union as a terrorist organization,” he said. “Well, we don’t have to try. The Soviet Union was a terrorist organization. In no other country were so many citizens imprisoned under false political accusations.”

Ivan Nechepurenko has been a reporter with the Moscow bureau since 2015, covering politics, economics, sports, and culture in Russia and the former Soviet republics. He was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia. More about Ivan Nechepurenko

Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter based in the Moscow bureau. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer