Goodwin lecture draws hundreds

Last night, about 500 students and members of the Philadelphia community gathered in Irvine Auditorium to hear noted historian and Pulitzer Prize-winner Doris Kearns Goodwin speak about politics, baseball and everything in between.

Goodwin was brought to Penn by the Fox Leadership Program as part of its spring forum.

She began her career working as a top aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson during his term in the White House. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1995 book No Ordinary Time, which chronicled the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

University President Judith Rodin, who helped bring Goodwin to Penn, gave a brief introduction before Goodwin took the stage.

Goodwin began her speech with several anecdotes about her life as a child growing up in Long Island, N.Y., in the 1950s, where her lifelong love of history began.

Two things in particular sparked Goodwin's interest in history. She recounted the tale of her father teaching her to keep score at baseball games at the young age of six. Goodwin said her ability to reflect the details of the games emerged into an ability to observe and reflect the details of history.

Goodwin also credited her mother with contributing to her intense interest in learning about the past. An invalid for most of her life, Goodwin's mother was confined to the house, where Goodwin would ask her to recite tales from her own childhood.

Goodwin continued the speech with memories of the time she spent as a White House intern under Lyndon Johnson. She spoke of the former president as a great civil rights leader, and she said she believes his achievements in that domain are what earned him an important place in history.

Goodwin's speech would not have been complete without a lamentation of the devastating loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers when the franchise was moved to Los Angeles. A devout Dodgers fan, Goodwin recalled wishing harm upon various members of the Yankees in the form of broken arms and legs.

However, the one topic Goodwin did not touch on was the recent plagiarism accusations against her.

Goodwin has been accused of borrowing from Lynne McTaggart's book Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times in her 1987 historical piece The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Goodwin has acknowledged similarities between the two books, but she has denied allegations that she plagiarized.

Although the issue has drawn attention in recent weeks, no one in attendance asked Goodwin about the allegations during the question-and-answer segment that followed the speech.

When asked what she thought about President Bush as a leader, Goodwin praised his decision to put people into the Cabinet who were more experienced than he was. She said the decision by Bush is comparable to one made by Abraham Lincoln during his presidency, and she praised both men for having the strength to withstand public criticism.

Another student asked Goodwin if she thought that Franklin Roosevelt would have been a good president given more peaceful circumstances. She remarked that the country's situation during his presidency had created the opportunity for him to rally the energies of the people, and that in doing so, he was a success.

Goodwin compared the problems that Roosevelt faced to those faced by Bush following the events of Sept. 11.

"The times create opportunities for people," Goodwin said. "The question is whether they can make use of these opportunities."

One audience member asked Goodwin if she thought a day would come when the country would have a president who was not a white male. Without any hesitation, Goodwin responded by saying that, in her opinion, the country is ready to support Colin Powell for president, should he choose to run for the position.

"He has so transcended, in a sense, that prejudice," she said.

As for a female president, Goodwin said she believes there are not enough women in the ranks of either major party currently. The pool is not sufficiently large to choose from, but hopefully, she said, that will one day change.

The final question lightened the tone that the preceding questions had set when one student asked Goodwin to speak about the fate of baseball. Goodwin ranted passionately about the fact that teams with the most money keep winning, while the teams in smaller cities are not given the chance because of a lack of revenue sharing.

"Football has been so much smarter," she said.

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