University Trustees have long wished to see a Quaker in the Oval Office, according to 1987 College graduate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
After the Board of Trustees approved a resolution in appreciation of his service at their Friday meeting, Huntsman reflected on changes since he became a Trustee in 1996.
“I remember sitting in this meeting twenty years ago, and the great lament was, ‘we don’t have enough Penn people running for politics at the highest level,’” he said.
He paused as his speech was drowned out by the guffawing audience and Board of Trustees.
Huntsman, who ran for president in 2012 as a Republican, originally supported Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump but then called for him to drop out of the race after the release of a video showing Trump bragging about groping and kissing women without consent.
After the laughter died down, Huntsman continued: “I’ll leave you with this one thought — the most important thing anyone in this group can do is to figure out ways to strengthen our democracy in America…because if we fail at that task, nothing else matters.”
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