Ernest Hollings - Post Political Life

Post Political Life

In retirement, Hollings continues to write opinion editorials for newspapers around South Carolina and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. His opinion editorials are also published every week in EconomyInCrisis.org, an independent protectionist news blog. In 2008, the University of South Carolina Press published Making Government Work, a book authored by Hollings with Washington, D.C., journalist Kirk Victor, imparting Hollings' view on the changes needed in Washington. Among other things, the book recommends a dramatic decrease in the amount of campaign spending. It also attacks free trade policies as inherently destructive, suggesting that certain protectionist measures have built the United States, and only a few parties actually benefit from free trade, such as large manufacturing corporations.

Hollings started the Hollings Scholarship in 2005. This scholarship gives over 100 undergraduates from around the country a 10 week internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a monetary scholarship for the school year.

Hollings helped to establish the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, an organization which promotes dialogue between the United States and Turkey, the nations of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia, and other countries with predominantly Muslim populations in order to open channels of communication, deepen cross-cultural understanding, expand people-to-people contacts, and generate new thinking on important international issues.

Hollings is on the Board of Advisors of the Charleston School of Law and is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law there. He delivered the commencement address to the first graduating class there on May 19, 2007.