Senator John Warner Named 2007 Adlai E. Stevenson ’18 Fellow
By Peter Krawczyk ‘08
News Staff Reporter
On Monday, February 15th, Senator John Warner, a Republican from Virginia, will deliver a speech to Choate students and faculty as the 2007 Adlai E. Stevenson II visiting fellow.
Since its endowment in 1976 with a gift from Martin and Patricia Koldyke of Chicago, the Stevenson Fellowship has brought a number of national politicians, diplomats and other leaders to campus, including Senator Adlai E. Stevenson III in 1981, Senator Christopher Dodd in 1998, and then-Representative Bill Richardson in 2001. The most recent Stevenson Fellow was Jeanne Shaheen, the former Governor of New Hampshire, who spoke at Choate in the spring of 2005.
In recent years, the duty of organizing the Fellowship has been filled by Zachary Goodyear, a faculty member of the History Department.
Said Goodyear, “My job is to try to bring to campus individuals who will be interesting for the student body to listen to. … Senator Warner is particularly interesting at the moment because he’s taken a lead role in thinking more critically about the Iraq War in the last year, year and a half.”
As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from January 1999 until the recent loss of control of the Senate to the Democrats, Warner has played a key role in overseeing the Bush Administration’s policies in regard to the Iraq War. Despite originally voting to fund the effort in 2003, Warner has recently criticized the Administration’s tactics in Iraq, saying in October that he feels the situation is “slipping sideways.”
He has also been instrumental in the moment in defining and preventing torture on the part of the U.S. Armed Services, working recently with Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, to pass legislation banning the “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of those in U.S. custody, legislation that the President signed reluctantly in December.
“Since he is a member of the president’s own party, [his views] do not always sit well with other Republicans,” noted Goodyear, “but it does illustrate that, especially in the Senate, the hard, fast party lines that people think are absolute don’t always hold.”
However, after the President announced his new strategy to deploy over 21,000 additional troops to Iraq, Warner appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live, where he urged objectivity and bipartisanship in Congress’s consideration of the plan, saying he would give a “respectful, objective analysis of [the President’s] program.”
In addition to bringing a guest speaker to campus, the History Department has also selected Drew Ruben ’07 as this year’s Junior Stevenson Fellow. The role of Junior Fellow is an honor bestowed upon a sixth-form student by the History Department, and it carries with it the duty of introducing the current student body to the memory of Governor Stevenson.
Senator Warner will continue a secession of speakers at Choate connected to the Iraq War, and many students are interested to hear from his viewpoint on the topic.
Said Barrett LaChance ’07, “After the liberal views we’ve heard recently, it’ll be nice to hear from a more balanced perspective. I think it’s important to consider all sides of the issue. … Hopefully this will be one of the more interesting Special Programs we’ve had.”
