[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 118 (Friday, July 31, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




INCLUSION OF THE HARVARD KENNEDY GRADUATE SCHOOL BULLETIN, WINTER 2009, 
                       HONORING WARREN I. CIKINS

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                        HON. GERALD E. CONNOLLY

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 31, 2009

  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I rise today to include into 
the Record the Harvard Kennedy Graduate School Bulletin for Winter 
2009, honoring the public service of Warren I. Cikins. Warren has spent 
50 years as a dedicated public servant. He started out in this body, as 
a legislative assistant to former Congressman Brooks Hays of Arkansas. 
His public service spanned stints in the Kennedy White House, with the 
Commission on Civil Rights, with the U.S. Agency on International 
Development, with the Equal Opportunity Commission, and with Chief 
Justice Warren Burger. Warren also was one of my predecessors on the 
Fairfax County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors, ably serving his 
constituents.
  The article I am including in the record provides an example of a 
truly exemplary public servant, and the value of one person's 
dedication. In it, Warren is quoted as saying, ``I was committed to 
making a difference.'' Madam Speaker, I have known him for many years 
and I can proudly attest that Warren Cikins has indeed made a positive 
difference in his community and in our nation.

          Harvard Kennedy Gratuate School Bulletin Winter 2009

       Warren Cikins MPA 1954 remembers how his decision to attend 
     the Kennedy School--then the Littauer School--was met with 
     skepticism by peers and mentors alike. His closest friends 
     from his undergraduate days at Harvard were going into 
     medicine, business, and law. His father had dreamed of his 
     becoming an engineer, and one of his government professors 
     wondered aloud; ``Why go here? Make a lot of money, then go 
     into public service.''
       But he never doubted his career choice. His ambition, he 
     says, began as a boy, living in Dorchester, Massachusetts, 
     listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the radio 
     talk to the American people.
       ``It was always my intent to serve the public; I was 
     committed to making a difference,'' says Cikins, 78, who grew 
     up in a devout Orthodox Jewish household. Nothing, it seemed 
     to him, could be more important than the work of the public 
     servant.
       Looking back, Cikins says he has no regrets. His career, 
     spanning more than 50 years and including work with all three 
     branches of government, overlapped with many of the country's 
     pivotal events. In his first full-time job after the Kennedy 
     School, he served as legislative assistant to Arkansas 
     Congressman Brooks Hays when Hays intervened in Governor 
     Orval Faubus's attempt to block the integration of Little 
     Rock's Central High School--an effort that would later cost 
     Hays his seat.
       Cikins served with Hays in the Kennedy White House after 
     first serving as Hays' assistant when he was appointed 
     Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations. At 
     the Commission on Civil Rights in 1964 Cikins helped bring 
     about the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He 
     followed with stints at the United States Agency for 
     International Development (USAID), where he sought to attract 
     highly qualified minorities, and at the Equal Employment 
     Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
       A self-described moderate liberal, Cikins fought throughout 
     his career for those who had no voice. And he did it, he 
     says, by looking for the similarities he shared with his 
     colleagues rather than the differences. In his 2005 memoir, 
     In Search of Middle Ground, Cikins writes, ``My style was 
     always one of outreach. I believed in bipartisanship, bridge-
     building, compromise, and civility. Confrontational 
     approaches were an anathema to me.''
       He put this advice to great use and success as a two-term 
     elected member of the Fairfax County (VA) Board of 
     Supervisors, on which he served from 1975 to 1980. Local 
     politician Gerry Hyland, who worked with Cikins, noted in a 
     profile in the local newspaper: ``Warren is viewed as a 
     person who cares and who works toward consensus. The will of 
     the group is going to prevail above his own point of view.''
       It is in the compromises, he says, that the work gets done, 
     repeating often a truism he attributes to Hays, his former 
     boss and mentor: ``Half of something is better than all of 
     nothing.''
       As a senior administrator at the Brookings Institution, 
     where he spent more than 15 years, Cikins continued to 
     promote outreach and conciliation by establishing, among many 
     programs he created there, a highly successful annual seminar 
     on the administration of justice, which sought to resolve 
     differences between the three branches of government, and the 
     Newly Elected Members of Congress seminar, an effort that 
     helped bring new members of Congress up to speed. Towards the 
     end of his career at Brookings, he devoted much of his energy 
     to bringing greater attention to improving criminal 
     rehabilitation.
       In his 2001 class report marking the 50th anniversary of 
     his graduation from Harvard, Cikins wrote that he considered 
     his work in improving the criminal justice system, in 
     cooperation with Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, 
     one of his greatest accomplishments. Quoting Dostoyevsky, 
     Cikins noted in his memoir, ``Civilization will be judged by 
     how it treats its wrongdoers.''
       Cikins's personal life reflects these same values. He 
     remains close to his friends from high school at Boston 
     Latin, many of whom went on with him to Harvard. Recently 
     with his wife of 44 years, Sylvia, Cikins celebrated the 80th 
     birthday of his longtime Kennedy School friend, Mark Cannon 
     MPP 1953, a Mormon and political conservative. And Cikins 
     regarded Hays, whose Baptist faith ran as deep as Cikins's 
     did in Judaism, as one of the most influential and 
     inspirational people in his life. They remained close until 
     Hays's death in 1981.
       Of the many accolades recognizing his contributions to 
     public service that he's received over the years, from 
     prominent figures that include Supreme Court Justices Burger 
     and William Rehnquist, a letter he recently received from 
     former New York Congressman and Harvard alumnus Amo Houghton, 
     a Republican, says it most succinctly:
       ``You were the role model; you're the person who constantly 
     tried to bring us back toward the center, and I thank you for 
     it . . . you're a great example.''

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