Capitol Connection: Political Figures Who Switched To Academia (And Vice Versa)
Brandon Smith / Indiana Public Broadcasting
Gov. Mitch Daniels speaks to reporters at an event Wednesday morning amid reports he will be the next president of Purdue University.
Though multiple media outlets are reporting Mitch Daniels will Purdue University’s next president, the governor did not want to talk about it at a Wednesday morning press event.
“It’s just not appropriate. It’s not my— it’s not a topic for today,” Daniels told Indiana Public Broadcasting‘s Brandon Smith, adding “Of course I’m committed to this job, whatever else does or doesn’t happen.”
If Daniels’ move from the statehouse in Indianapolis to Hovde Hall in West Lafayette is confirmed at Thursday’s trustees meeting, he wouldn’t be the first politician to take on the top job at a university.
Below the jump, we have a photo gallery of ten big names who made the leap from politics to academia (or vice versa).
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Before being appointed Supreme Commander of NATO land forces in 1950, future president Dwight Eisenhower served for two years as the president of Columbia University in New York. Reportedly, the job was an uncomfortable fit for both "Ike" and the university.
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David Boren (left) served four years as Oklahoma's governor and fifteen years in the U.S. Senate before being appointed the University of Oklahoma in 1994. He also served for nearly a decade on Yale's Board of Trustees.
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Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates posed with U.S. Troops in Afghanistan. The troops were holding the flag of Texas A&M University, where Gates was president from 2002 to 2006. After retiring as Secretary in 2011, he was named the Chancellor of the College of William and Mary. (Gates, by the way, earned a master's from Indiana University.)
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Lawrence Summers's tenure as Harvard University president was bookended by his service to two Democratic presidential administrations — from 1999 to 2001 he was the U.S. Treasury Secretary under Clinton and from 2009 to 2011 he was the director of the National Economic Council for the Obama Administration.
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After eight terms in the Indiana General Assembly, John Gregg served as interim president of his Vincennes University — his alma mater — for less than a year from 2003 to 2004. He is currently running for governor on the Democratic ticket.
