But it was fun, and exciting, to be living on campus. My apartment was over by the business school, a beautiful area overlooking the Charles River. It was wintertime and I had to wear a stocking hat and a heavy overcoat. Every day I’d walk through the business school and cross a bridge over to the Kennedy School, a pretty good hike.
Even though I was all bundled up because of the cold, I was experiencing a sense of personal freedom. No one was recognizing me in that clothing and with the beard. I just blended in. All of a sudden, I could stand on crowded street corners with no security around, and with a feeling I hadn’t had for a long, long time. Not since my early wrestling days had it been like this.
One morning after I first arrived, I was passing by all the red-brick buildings in the business school when I saw—the Mellon Building. I burst out laughing so hard that I fell to my knees. People were looking at me like I was nuts. But didn’t they realize? Thornton Mellon, one of the great movie characters, played by Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School. Remember when he throws the dirt and hits the professor? It was taken right out of Harvard! It was real!
Classes didn’t start right away, so I was still getting acclimated. I was taken to see the statue of John Harvard. It’s all bronze, but mostly oxidized—except for the one shoe that faces forward, which is bright and looks highly polished. I asked why, and they said: “Well, because it’s a myth that, on exam days, you walk by and touch John Harvard’s shoe for good luck.” So its look was just from all those thousands of hands hitting the shoe!
I came to find out that the statue has an interesting history. It’s based upon three lies. First, the guy isn’t really John Harvard. The day they did the statue, he wasn’t available, so they got somebody else to pose. Second, John Harvard didn’t found Harvard. What John Harvard did was contribute his family’s substantial library of books. And third, the John Harvard symbol means honesty. On top of two other fabrications! How about that?
I was given a beautiful little office, in toward the courtyard of the Kennedy School. That’s when I encountered my first obstacle—this massive-looking monster, this alien thing called a computer. I thought, holy smokes, I’m going to have to learn how to use one of these!
You see, when I was governor, if I needed anything from a computer, I had a couple of whizzes in my office. Any subject I could bring up, within an hour or so they would have an answer for me. The job was, in many ways, an oxymoron. I mean by that, you do nothing, and yet “know” everything. Let’s say, hypothetically, I needed to know how many walleyed pike had been caught in Lake Milacs last year. All I’d do is mention this to my staff, and pretty soon I’d have a full-page report on my desk. Then I could walk out to the press fully briefed as an expert on that subject. You simply have to absorb it and make it look like you have this supreme knowledge that the average person doesn’t.
Now, the first thing I had to do at Harvard was tackle a computer. Fortunately, there were people around with a very patient attitude. And I did conquer the monster. Eventually, I sent an e-mail on my own, to a Harvard student. I let him know this was a first for Jesse Ventura, in case he wanted to save it for posterity. Of course, once people knew I had an e-mail address at Harvard, every morning I’d come in and have thirty of them waiting! I’d sit down and try to answer them all. That was a half day’s work right there, because I’d never learned how to type, either.
One day, when I was in my office putting together an outline of my schedule, a kid walked in who was part of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. It’s the oldest college theater group is the country, and has put on shows for more than 160 years. Originally, the Hasty Pudding Club was a secret society, kind of like Skull and Bones at Yale, inspired by a student named Nymphus Hatch in 1795 and named for the traditional American dessert that the founding members ate at their first meeting. The club counts five presidents among its noteworthy members, including the two Adamses, the two Roosevelts, and John F. Kennedy. Its theater started in 1844, and the modern Pudding show has evolved into a spectacle that was certainly never envisioned back then. It’s a no-holds-barred burlesque, with men playing both the male and female roles in a play with lots of song-and-dance lines, mimicking a Vegas-type showgirl routine. However, as I say, it’s all done in drag.
You may recall I’d already achieved some renown for my feather boa costume in my wrestling days, so I didn’t lack experience in such matters. They were getting ready to do the 2004 show, and I said to the student, “Wow, I sure would love to be part of that.” So the student went to see the director, who was very excited about my participating. I couldn’t be part of the regular cast and crew, because they put the show on for weeks and then travel around with it every year. But they picked one particular night, and wrote in my own three lines at Hasty Pudding! Then they advertised it all over campus with posters stating: “Come and see Governor Jesse Ventura as you will have never seen him before!”
I kept my beard, and I decided to be a blonde. I went with what I called the “European Look”—that is, miniskirt with unshaven legs. If I remember right, it was pink-sequined. I told them I’d have to take a pass on the finale, where all the fellas end up in a big conga line with their legs kicking, due to my back problem. Other than that, I was game for all.
Well, the show sold out that night. The place was packed! I got so into listening and laughing with the audience reaction, instead of taking the pregnant pause, that I ended up forgetting my last line. My son was there and he videotaped it all from the audience. It’s gone into my archives, never to be released.
But we had a great time and, when it was over, cast and crew all got back into our “civvies” and headed over to John Harvard’s Brew House—where they make microbrews right there on campus—to wash a few down. I happened to notice these three young guys sitting at a table. They were each wearing T-shirts that said, in big black letters: “HARVARD SUCKS.”
Hey, I’m teaching here, and even part of the Hasty Pudding. Which means that Harvard is my school—I’m Crimson! So seeing this brought out the old frogman in me. I thought, nobody would walk into a Navy SEAL bar and walk out again standing, wearing “SEAL TEAM SUCKS” on their T-shirt. This demanded a response!
So, I walked over to the table. I was still pretty imposing—six-four, 255 pounds—and getting back in shape by training for two hours every morning at the Harvard Athletic Club and then running three miles a day. Also, by now, I’d had a few brews. I stared hard at these three fellows and said, “What’s with these T-shirts, ‘HARVARD SUCKS’?”
One of them replied casually, “Well, we think Harvard sucks.”
I said, “Oh yeah? Where are you from?”
“Texas,” another said.
I said, “Really. Well, I go to Harvard. And I hear that, in Texas, the only thing they’ve got are steers and queers—and I don’t see no horns on you!”
That used to be our standard line in the Navy to get any Texan to fight. The three of them glared back at me, in silence.
Then I added this: “You’ve got two options. One is to deal with me. Two is to take the shirts off and put them on again. Inside out.”
They chose the second option.
Word spread quickly across the Harvard campus that Governor Ventura had stood tall for the Crimson.
Headline: THE BODY POLITIC
Like a pro wrestling match where the featured performer walks out and whips up the crowd beforehand, Jesse Ventura’s first Harvard class began early and outside the ropes. Arriving at Lowell House for his weekly seminar, Ventura—a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics this semester—waited for another class to finish. While he stood outside, students eager to hear from the former wrestling star and Minnesota governor, whose reputation for shooting from the hip is well established, gathered around. He did not disappoint.
—Boston Globe, February 25, 2004
I needed a title for my seminar, and I decided to call it “Body Slamming the Political Establishment: Third Pa
rty Politics.” I had access to the Harvard library, Widener, which is considered second only to the Library of Congress. Acres of books! I would spend hours there, and in my office, preparing my lectures. I didn’t go to Harvard to embarrass myself.
Any classes that are taken from fellowship professors are not graded. They’re intended as exchanges of ideas; getting people thinking. That’s what’s great about it. And anyone could attend. There would be posters all over campus promoting what my subject was that week. These had pictures of me in full battle attire, holding a big, menacing-looking rifle, above a caption that read, “BIG MAN ON CAMPUS.” I’m proud to say that they had to move my classes into an auditorium setting at Lowell House, to hold the numbers. It came to pass that I had the largest class attendance of any fellowship professor in Harvard history. Hundreds came every Tuesday, packed in to the rafters.
I told the students at the first session, “Look, you’re going to learn at Harvard all the academic part of politics—the theory. I’m here to teach you about the reality. And reality may not be the same as theory.”
The seminars lasted two hours, with the last forty-five minutes being all back-and-forth between the class and me. They don’t want a fellowship professor necessarily lecturing the kids, because they get that all day long. My first class focused on how I won the gubernatorial election in 1998. I asked the class if they knew which politician had pioneered the use of the Internet. (Hint: Not Howard Dean. Me.) We talked about why only half of the voting-age people in the U.S. even bother to go to the polls. And why there’s no public outcry over the Republicans and Democrats getting around the campaign-finance laws.
A fellowship professor is also allowed to bring in guest speakers. For one seminar, I had Governor Angus King come down from Maine to talk about governing from a third-party perspective. He was marvelous. He spoke of how an independent candidate can be a mediator, in a perfect position to bring the other two political sides toward a more centrist point of view. Angus also spoke about how he helped get himself elected by writing a book, telling exactly what he believed in. He got the books printed on the cheap, and would hand them out at each campaign stop.
Another time I brought in Dean Barkley, my campaign manager in Minnesota. He was very knowledgeable about how the two parties are destroying our political process. One of the interesting things that Dean pointed out was the way they’ve used redistricting, or gerrymandering, to eliminate competition. Out of 435 congressmen, there are about 400 “safe seats,” where nobody but the incumbent has a chance; in 2002, eighty-one of the representatives even ran unopposed by another major party candidate!
I decided to do a class on terrorism, because I felt that, today, terrorism may have to be dealt with at the local level as much as at the federal. Here, I brought in my buddy Richard Marcinko, the “rogue warrior” I’d called for some insight after my meeting with the twenty-three CIA agents in the State Capitol. I introduced Dick by saying, “You’re gonna hear it today from a guy who was a shooter. This is the man killing the terrorists, not the one pushing papers around authorizing it. You’re about to meet the trigger man.”
Dick was phenomenal. And he brought up something that terrified me. “I’ll tell you what,” he said to the class. “You give me Governor Ventura, myself, and eight more of my fellow Navy SEALs—and we could paralyze the entire country of the United States of America.”
First I thought to myself, Come on, Dick, you’re talking about ten guys! But he went on to describe how the two snipers in Washington, D.C.—who weren’t even that good—had intimidated 24 million people, making them afraid to go to the gas station or sometimes even leave their homes. So, if you consider a coordinated effort of, say, five sniper pairs located in different parts of the U.S.—one in New England, others in Florida, the Midwest, L.A., maybe Seattle—who are well-trained and randomly starting to blow up bridges, or fire semi-automatics, I realized: He’s right, this could bring the country to its knees. It was eye-opening, and chilling.
My last classes were the ones on President Kennedy’s assassination, and how wrestling prepares you for politics.
People don’t realize that, if you have time on your hands, you can get a Harvard education without paying any tuition. Officially classes aren’t open to the public but no one ever took attendance or asked, “Should you be in this class?” You would not get a degree, but you could learn a lot until you got caught.
As a fellowship professor, I had several students serve as my liaisons and arrange everything. If there’s a particular class you want to attend, they find out when and where it is, and lead you right to the door. The one that intrigued me most was over at Harvard Law School—Alan Dershowitz’s course in Criminal Law.
Unannounced to Professor Dershowitz, I just walked in and sat in the back of the room. With my new beard, he didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t get enough of Dershowitz; he’s a remarkable teacher. He’s so engaging, and has a phenomenal memory for cases of law. You wonder how anybody could remember the name, the number, and the year all of these happened. But Dershowitz can.
The topic that first day was “The Crime of Rape.” The question he posed was, can a husband rape a wife? As Professor Dershowitz pointed out, there is an unwritten contract in marriage, and part of it has to do with sex. Just because one partner is in the mood doesn’t mean the other one is. In light of this, does it have to be consensual? Or can a rape occur?
I thought about this for a minute, and an answer popped into my head. So I raised my hand, and he called on me. I said, “Professor, in light of what our society has deemed rape, I would have to say that, yes, it is possible for a husband to rape a wife. Because our society describes rape not as a sexual act, but an act of violence. In light of that, you can’t hit your wife, or that can be deemed assault. I would think sex could be looked at in the same way.”
Professor Dershowitz smiled, pointed a finger at me, and said: “Very good.”
I wanted to put my chest out, I was so proud. The whole class was chuckling, because the kids knew who I was. But they’d caught on that Professor Dershowitz didn’t. After class when I went down to say hello, he was beaming. He said, “I didn’t even know it was you—until you spoke. Hard not to recognize that voice.”
He told me I was welcome to come anytime, and I did go to a few more of his classes.
Another thing that made my experience at Harvard very unique: Every week at the Kennedy School, they have speakers in the evenings. These events are open to the public, and they generally sell tickets. Jesse Jackson came through while I was there. When we had dinner together after his talk, he said, “We need to get together and cause trouble.” He felt that, essentially, we were after the same result, although we might come at it in different ways. By that, I believe he meant more truthful government.
When I first arrived at Harvard, I’d been concerned because I didn’t see any partying as I walked around campus. I thought, this seems a bit un-American. Then I found out that Harvard does not have fraternities or sororities, but instead has various clubs that own buildings on campus. And that’s where the students go to have fun on the weekends. I was made an honorary member of the Spee Club, the same one that JFK belonged to in 1938. I went to a couple of their parties, which renewed my faith in youth, in college, in America. Because let me tell you, they were partying! All night long!
By working out at the Athletic Club, where only the varsity athletes are allowed, I dropped about thirty pounds. I was able to join because, when I’d visited Harvard earlier, I’d taken time to speak to the football team. So when I came back, they made me an honorary member.
Harvard did wonders for me in many ways. I’d become very cynical by the time I arrived. Being around the energy of the young people, their quick intelligence and enthusiasm, gave me a ray of hope again. It made me wonder, could this be the generation that doesn’t repeat history? Mine sure wasn’t. I wanted to do whatever I could to help them see a clearer way into the future.
&
nbsp; After I left in May 2004, some students petitioned that I be named to replace Dan Glickman, who had resigned as dean of the Kennedy School. I said, “Are you crazy? Not even Harvard will do that!” Their reasoning, as they explained it, was that the dean is more a figurehead than a nuts-and-bolts type. “We want to bring attention to the school,” one student said, “and who would be better than you to do that?”
But, like I say: As flattering as this was, I don’t think Harvard would have dared consider it. I don’t have the credentials; all those Ph.D.s and other pieces of paper. I come from the school of hard knocks, no matter which arena it is.
CHAPTER 14
Thinking War in a Peaceful Place
“A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.”
—Edmund Burke
After spending two days at Conception Bay, I know. We are going to find a winter home somewhere in the southern Baja. We continue on down Highway 1, through the old capital of Loreto and the new capital of La Paz and, further south, we branch off onto Highway 19. That’s the road toward Todos Santos, an artist’s colony and a great surf spot on the Pacific side. It is also said to be the inspiration for Don Henley and the Eagles’ huge hit “Hotel California,” and how can we resist at least spending a night there?
The Hotel California has been renovated by new owners, and it is a treat to stay in a luxurious suite and wash away the road in an adobe sauna. Terry and I shop around and, sure enough, find a lovely stone house for sale in the vicinity, overlooking the ocean. “This is it,” I tell her. She admits to me later that she’s been planning to make sure I’m all set up in the first two weeks, and then she’s going home.
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! Page 25