Political Backlash
In January 2006 national attention focused on the Harvard final club system as a result of the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito. Alito came under criticism as a result of his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative group that opposed affirmative action and the admission of women into Princeton. One of the leading Democrats highlighting this charge was Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Conservatives, however, responded by pointing out Kennedy's membership in the Owl Club of Harvard. As a result of the political fallout, Senator Kennedy left the club.
In August of that same year, Massachusetts Democratic Gubernatorial candidate (and now Governor) Deval Patrick came under fire for his membership in the Fly Club. Critics viewed Patrick's membership in the club as contradictory to his image as a champion of civil rights. Patrick countered that he had left the club in the early 1980s when he realized that it contradicted his values, although the club itself had Patrick's name on its roster as late as 2006.
Read more about this topic: Final Club
Famous quotes containing the word political:
“Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.”
—Dennis Altman (b. 1943)