[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 209 (Thursday, December 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8246-S8247]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO GARRISON NELSON
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to recognize the
achievements and contributions of a renowned political scholar,
remarkable educator, and a personal friend. This year, Garrison Nelson
will conclude five decades of teaching at the University of Vermont,
where he is recognized as a legend in the department of political
science.
Garrison, the inaugural Elliott A. Brown Green and Gold Professor of
Law, Politics, and Political Behavior, is known by some Members of this
body, as well as legislators throughout the country who rely on him to
offer political insight. Widely considered a leading expert on
congressional history, Garrison has authored more than 150 articles and
professional papers on national politics with a major focus on the U.S.
Congress and elections in Vermont. His works have educated students
worldwide and can be found in close to 500 libraries in the United
States and 13 countries around the world.
An Irish native of Boston, Garrison has resided in the Green Mountain
State for most of his adult life, adding much richness to the State's
political landscape. I have known Garrison since he served as an aide
in my office shortly after my first election to the Senate. Garrison is
as revered as he is brilliant. His skill and affinity for the esoteric
is evident in both his teaching style and his storytelling, perhaps
most notably his magnum opus, ``John William McCormack: A Political
Biography.'' Works like this one have made significant contributions to
our Nation's historical library, offering profiles and untold stories
of the political icons of our time. In today's political environment,
such citations of success and failure can offer us precious insight
into improving our own oath to serve.
As Garrison departs the Old Mill at the University of Vermont at the
end of this year, he will leave a legacy that has reached more than
13,000 students. With them and many others, he has shared his
appreciation of and reverence for the American political system and the
need for participation to ensure the success of our democracy. I am
grateful for his commitment to inspire the next generation of political
leaders.
In recognition of Garrison's timeless contributions, I ask unanimous
consent that an article by Terri Hallenback. appearing in Vermont's own
Seven Days, about Garrison's achievements be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From Seven Days, October 18, 2017]
Fifty Years, 13,450 Students and 5;000 Interviews: UVM's Garrison
Nelson Calls It a Career
(By Terri Hallenback)
When former Vermont governor Howard Dean ran for president
in 2004, national media turned to University of Vermont
political science professor Garrison Nelson for insight.
``I think he is an arrogant, ill-tempered schmo who does
not play well with others,'' Nelson told the Houston
Chronicle.
Many of the same political reporters came back 12 years
later, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wanted the job. They
called on Nelson to capture the politics and personality of
the quirky democratic socialist who'd once been mayor of
Burlington.
``Bernie's the last person you'd want to be stuck on a
desert island with,'' Nelson told the New Yorker in 2015.
``Two weeks of lectures about health care, and you'd look for
a shark and dive in.''
In his day job, the bearded professor with a booming,
Boston-accented voice has spent nearly 50 years bringing dry
political facts to life for thousands of students while
churning out a steady flow of academic research.
To the broader public, though, Nelson is known as the man
to whom journalists both local and national regularly turned
for well-informed analysis--and no-holds-barred skewering--of
Vermont politicians and their ambitions.
Now, after 13,450 students (including this reporter), 11
books and more than 5,000 media interviews (yes, he keeps
track), UVM's most quoted professor is retiring. The 146
students in his two political science classes this semester
will be his last.
Nelson is calling an end to a career that has made him one
of UVM's most public figures. On campus and off, he has
chafed and informed generations of students, politicians and
voters. ``With full classrooms and multiple book demands at
age 75, the pace has become grueling,'' said Nelson, whose
walk has slowed to a shuffle on the well-worn route between
his Old Mill office and Lafayette Hall classroom.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that Nelson lasted a
full year, let alone five decades, at UVM. He's poked at not
just politicians, but university brass. In 1971, as a
relatively new, untenured teacher, he protested the
politically motivated ouster of a left-wing professor,
Michael Parenti; 30 years later, then-tenured Nelson feuded
publicly with his university bosses over pay and college
leadership.
For a while, Nelson considered leaving UVM. From 1996 to
2002, he worked part-time at Boston area colleges and had
designs on landing a full-time job at one of them. But he
held on to his tenure and continued to teach in Burlington
during that time. He's now one of the university's longest-
serving professors.
As he completes his employment, Nelson said he has
mellowed. He claims to admire the full slate of university
leaders above him. The twice-divorced Nelson remarried this
year. He literally beams over the positive reviews of his
newly released book, a 910-page tome on the little-remembered
1960s-era U.S. House speaker John McCormack. Nelson refers to
the book's publication as the ``crowning moment'' of his
career.
At an official gathering last week to honor his upcoming
retirement, Nelson told colleagues that a friend asked him
why he wanted to retire now, when things are going so well.
``My answer was, 'It won't get any better than this,'' ' he
said.
In the classroom, Nelson is known for turning large numbers
of students--including apolitical ones--on to political
history through the stories behind it. He's a natural
raconteur, whether the topic is the rise of Woodrow Wilson,
the Austin-Boston dominance of the U.S. House or his own
Massachusetts roots. Nelson's single mom raised him and his
younger half-sister in working-class Lynn after his Communist
father left.
``Super paper. Star of the day,'' Nelson told one young
woman as he handed back papers to the 39 students in his
Electing the President class last week.
``More sources, Maddie. More sources next time,'' he told
another, also loud enough to be heard by everyone in the
room.
Former student Jade Harberg said she liked the way Nelson
challenged students with candor and humor. ``I appreciated
teachers who were willing to shame their students to work
harder,'' the 2013 UVM grad said.
Harberg, who now works for Nelson as a researcher in
Washington, D.C., recalled that the professor sent her class
an email listing the students who had turned their papers in
early and those who had been late. He included a statistical
analysis that concluded men were more likely to be tardy than
women and told the class, ``This is why women are ruling the
world.''
Nelson gets high marks on the website Rate My Professors.
Former students graded him 4 out of 5 in quality, and 89
percent say they would take his course again. But the
comments reflect a range of reactions to the professor's
personality.
Some called him a ``genius,'' ``hilarious'' and ``extremely
helpful.'' A typical dissenter, on the other hand, concluded:
``Pompous, has a weird inferiority complex about not having
gone to Harvard.''
Clark Bensen, a 1974 UVM grad, said Nelson's intensity
helped push him into political science from his math-
economics major. ``For me, he was a breath of fresh air, or
more like a gale-force wind,'' Bensen said. Today, Bensen
still uses the skills Nelson taught him to run Polidata, a
Virginia-based firm that analyzes political data.
Nelson made an impression on his colleagues, too. Anthony
``Jack'' Gierzynski, chair of the UVM political science
department, said that when he arrived at the university in
1992, he saw Nelson's students were enthralled by his
storytelling.
``At first, I tried to imitate that,'' Gierzynski said, but
he quickly found it didn't work for him. Noting the 2013
retirement of equally charismatic political science professor
Frank Bryan, Gierzynski said Nelson is ``the last of that
breed.''
Despite his outsize personality, Nelson has spent a
considerable part of his professorial career toiling quietly
on detailed research on esoteric subjects. He has produced
thick volumes on the membership of congressional committees
that may be valuable reference books--albeit not best
sellers.
At least one student appreciated that. ``The guy has an
encyclopedic mind and has done granular research on New
England politics,'' said journalist Scott MacKay, a 1974 grad
who has long relied on Nelson's insights--and quotability--as
a political reporter in Vermont and Rhode Island.
Nelson had wanted to write a book about McCormack since he
met the former House speaker in 1968, just before he started
working at UVM. Eleven publishers turned him down--McCormack
was a key player in his time but a relatively obscure
historical figure--before Bloomsbury Publishing finally
offered him a deal. John William McCormack: A Political
Biography came out in March.
Such work earns an author academic credibility, but Nelson
is more likely to be remembered for his outspoken political
commentary. Insisting it ``was not a central feature of my
UVM life,'' he explained, ``I fell
[[Page S8247]]
into it because, apart from my buddy Frank Bryan, others at
UVM were reluctant to do it.''
Nelson has been analyzing Vermont politics for print and
television journalists since Democrat Phil Hoff sat in the
governor's office in the 1960s. He's provided plenty of
straight, factual observations but over time became known for
a spicier variety of analysis.
He admits that he's dished it out unevenly.
Nelson thinks highly of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), for
whom he worked for two years, so Leahy has largely been
spared his barbs. He has also generally spoken favorably of
the political skills of former U.S senator Jim Jeffords (I-
Vt.) and former Republican governors Jim Douglas and Richard
Snelling.
For Sanders, whose political career he's followed since
1981, Nelson has both criticism and affection. ``The
difference between Bernie and most of the lefties is, Bernie
wants to win,'' Nelson said in the October 2015 New Yorker
article. ``Most lefties don't want to win, because if you
win, you sell out your purity.''
His analysis was acceptable to his daughter, Shyla Nelson
Stewart, a Sanders devotee who seconded the senator's
nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
``The most important thing he said was, Bernie has been on
the same agenda his entire career,'' she said of her dad's
comments, ``and that that agenda has caught up with the
times.''
Nelson has been harder on Dean and Congressman Peter Welch
(D-Vt.).
``I never understood why Howard was running for president
other than the fact that Howard wanted to be president,'' he
said before class one day last month. ``It was just Howard's
ego.'' Dean did not respond to a message from Seven Days
seeking his point of view.
Nelson is slightly less dismissive of Welch. Nelson said
their feud started when he made a comment to a reporter
during Welch's 1988 campaign for the Democratic U.S. House
nomination, saying Welch's strategy of concentrating his
campaign in southern Vermont was a mistake. ``Peter took
offense,'' Nelson said. When Welch confronted him, Nelson
said, he responded with choice words.
Welch insisted last week that he doesn't remember the
incident or Nelson's specific comments, though he did say the
professor was always critical.
``He showed no mercy,'' Welch said. ``He was extremely good
at cutting folks down to a size that was smaller than they
thought they deserved.''
Daughter Stewart provides some insight. ``What my father
has most railed against is anyone who has even the slightest
sense of entitlement,'' she said of Nelson, who often talks
about growing up poor.
Nelson saw that attitude in Dean, who grew up on New York
City's Park Avenue.
``His born-again liberalism has caught a lot of us by
surprise--it's a case of `Howard, we hardly knew ye,' ''
Nelson told the Associated Press in 2003. ``He's really a
classic Rockefeller Republican: a fiscal conservative and
social liberal.''
His disapproval of Welch, a lawyer from Springfield, Mass.,
is more complicated. Nelson viewed Welch and his late wife,
Joan Smith, as a couple in search of power--his in politics
and hers at UVM, where she was dean of the College of Arts
and Science and Nelson's boss.
In a 2001 column, the late Seven Days columnist Peter
Freyne wrote, ``Nelson told Seven Days that Smith and her
husband, former gubernatorial candidate Peter Welch, `wanted
to be the Democratic Snellings, with Peter holding the
governor's office and Joan holding high office at the
university'--a reference to the late Governor Richard
Snelling and wife Barbara Snelling, who served as a UVM vice
president for many years.''
Nelson does not let go of such opinions easily, nor does he
like being on the receiving end of the kind of criticism he
so readily doles out to others.
Nelson recalled comments Freyne made about him during
Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. ``Peter bashed me in four
separate columns,'' Nelson said, alleging that Freyne was
courting Dean's campaign in hopes of landing a job.
In one of those columns, Freyne said, ``Garrison despises
Howard Dean, always has and always will. We suggest it's all
about ego--Nelson's, not Dean's.''
Asked why this still roiled him 13 years after Dean's
campaign ended and eight years after Freyne's death, Nelson
said, ``I'm Irish, for Chrissakes; I don't forget anything.
Irish Alzheimer's--you never forget a grudge.''
Nelson doesn't get as much ink in the newspapers as he once
did--which is his choice, he said, because answering
questions from reporters takes away from his research time.
He didn't have a lot to say about former governor Peter
Shumlin and has been just as quiet on Gov. Phil Scott and
President Donald Trump. But he makes no apologies for
comments made over the years about politicians, students or
his bosses.
``When you're an outspoken person, you're going to piss
people off. I've pissed people off,'' Nelson said. ``But I'm
still here--50 years.''
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