When walking around campus, Mark Gordon, 52, can be easily identified by the faded purple and gold hat with Defiance College’s logo that he wears.Former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar will join Indiana University as a distinguished scholar and professor of practice.
Lugar also will donate records from his 36-year Senate career to the Bloomington school’s Modern Political Papers collection at the Herman B Wells Library, IU President Michael McRobbie announced Thursday.
During a campus ceremony that was broadcast online, Lugar said he is shipping 1,000 boxes of documents and memorabilia to IU, including “strange things that have been awarded over the years.”
He joked that scholars might unearth “gotcha moments” in his papers.
McRobbie said both Lugar and former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, director of IU’s Center on Congress, will teach at the new School of Global and International Studies. Hamilton’s congressional papers are already in IU’s collection of political documents.
The ex-lawmakers are “two of America’s greatest statesmen, two of America’s greatest internationalists, two of the people who have had more impact maybe than just about any other people in Congress in the post-World War II era,” he said.
Lugar, a Republican from Indianapolis who left the Senate this month, is a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Hamilton, a Democrat from Columbus, Ind., spent 34 years in Congress and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee.
The global studies school places IU “squarely in the forefront of international education,” Hamilton said.
Lugar said: “It is imperative that our students understand the economic, political and cultural dynamics that shape our world. Increasingly, employers are demanding strong foreign language skills.”
The IU affiliation is Lugar’s third with a university. In December, he announced plans to launch a Washington, D.C., internship academy for the University of Indianapolis, lecture at that school and become a visiting distinguished professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.
