I was very fortunate to be elected to the Society of Fellows at Harvard, which is, in effect, a small research center where you are given three years to do whatever work you want.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've been awed by the incredible opportunities that automatically float to the Harvard undergrads I once taught - from building homes for the poor in Nicaragua to landing prime White House internships.
I entered Harvard in 1965 not really knowing what I wanted to do. This confusion seems to have lost me a fellowship. G. D. Searle and Company, the pharmaceutical firm, had their home office in Skokie, and they gave a fellowship each year to a graduate from my high school that was going to major in science in college.
At Harvard, I worked for some time as a researcher in a lab for computer graphics and spatial analysis, which is one of the birthplaces for what we do.
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down.
I want to make as much of a contribution as I can, to Harvard, to higher education and hopefully, to education around the world.
I'm going to do some consulting for nonprofits and arts agencies. These are areas I'm interested in that didn't come directly out of Harvard, but certainly I started looking at things in a different manner.
Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.
I just went to Harvard a little while, because I graduated from Armstrong High School in Washington and then I went up there but I didn't stay that long because I went into show business.
The time I have already spent at Harvard has been a stimulating experience, and I look forward to developing my relationship and activities with the students, faculty and friends of the Harvard Business School community.
As a journalist I'm comfortable doing library research, and I did a lot! I had a fellowship at Radcliff for a year which gave me access to the Harvard system.