Lugar announces post-Senate plans
University of Indianapolis President Robert Manuel announced at a press conference on Dec. 7 that Sen. Richard Lugar will once again join UIndy to create the Richard G. Lugar Academy.
The academy will offer a program for students to study and intern at a new office in Washington, D.C. The semester-long program will consist of two days of classes and three days of interning with a political group, according to a UIndy press release.
“The idea is to take the faculty inside the history and political science department, sit them with the senator and design an experience that is unique and contemporary,” Manuel said.
People crowded the main lobby of Esch Hall to hear the announcement.
Manuel thanked members of the board of trustees, the faculty of the political science department and Mayor Greg Ballard for attending. Manuel then extended a welcome and thanks to Former UIndy President Gene Sease, who first brought Lugar to UIndy.
“It was Dr. Sease who invited him to join our board of trustees in 1970, and who hired him to teach here when he decided to run for the Senate in 1976,” Manuel said. “Professor Lugar taught political science here, giving students a front row seat to the political process.”
According to Manuel, it might have been easier to just thank everyone who had not been uplifted by the senator.
Lugar hosted his 36th Lugar Symposium for Tomorrow’s Leaders on Dec. 8. The symposium annually invites around 400 high school juniors from across Indiana to meet and discuss top political issues.
“In 2007, the University of Indianapolis established the Richard G. Lugar Center for Tomorrow’s Leaders, to institutionalize that symposium,” Manuel said.
Lugar did not say that he was going to be a regular on campus, but he will have a set number of dates when he will come to mentor students or give lectures.
“We’ll have an agreement or contract with the university, so that will be specific in due course, as well as the meetings in Washington,” Lugar said.
The academy will provide a way for the senator to interact with students about issues he has championed throughout his career, ranging from ending starvation around the globe and agriculture to weapons of mass destruction and nuclear policy.
“That’s why I was a candidate for re-election as vigorously as I knew how,” Lugar said. “But it was not to be, and I understand that. So now we have new opportunities, which we’re going to work [on] as creatively as possible to further ideas that I have found important, really, for many years.”
Sen. Richard Lugar announces plans to create a new academy that will offer an integrated internship and study program at a UIndy office in Washington, D.C. Photo by Victoria Jenkins
Although he will leave the U.S. Senate on Jan. 3, Lugar said that he is serious about dealing with the looming fiscal cliff, calling the issue unacceptably partisan and potentially detrimental to the economy.
“I believe this is extremely serious,” he said. “We’re going to be very active until the very end to bring about a solution.”
According to Interim Director of the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives and Associate Professor of History and Political Science Edward Frantz, this firsthand experience makes Lugar the perfect fit for the position. Frantz said that Lugar’s history serving on the Indianapolis Public School Board, as Mayor of Indianapolis, as a UIndy professor and a U.S. Senator will be invaluable.
“For a merged department of history and political science that has an international relations department, you couldn’t have asked for a better career,” Frantz said.
Although the history and political science department did not know exactly what was going to be announced, they had a fairly good idea, Frantz said.
“President Manuel has been at work on this for a long time,” Frantz said. “You can imagine that 11 members of a department on a Friday wouldn’t have [otherwise] been there.”
Frantz hopes Lugar’s role will highlight the work that is being done at UIndy.
In his closing remarks, Lugar said that he was excited about his post-senate plans.
“Finally, I just want to say that I look forward to this experience very much, because I’ve witnessed, during these last 36 years of visits, the growth of this campus. It has been dynamic,” Lugar said. “This is a great place, and it has an exciting future. So I think you can understand my joy in being a part of that.”
