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announced yesterday that you were elected to the Board of Overseers.” So that's the way I got the information that I had been elected, because all of the other candidates were told by bulletin that went out to the alumni, and of course I didn't get one. So, you ask about my relations. That's the second wave, or the second set of connections.
Then at the first meeting of the new members on the Board of Overseers I had to sort of get up to speed on what was expected and so forth because I knew nothing about it. I liked Harvard. I had friends who had gone there and I had a great deal of respect for the university, and I, as an overseer, was asked to serve on a couple of visiting committees and to serve as chairman of a couple. I served as chairman of the visiting committee for the Kennedy School of Government, and served on the committee for the School of Design and for the School of Public Health, I believe.
Those committee assignments meant frequent trips to the campus. The Board of Overseers, I've forgotten now how many times a year it met, but it met frequently as a board, I believe, of thirty. You were elected for a term of six years. So in those six years I got a pretty good sampling of what was going on. Following that term I continued to serve on a couple of committees and became involved in the Harvard Club of New York, and so forth. So, it's been a very happy relationship.
At the end of my six years on the board I was given an honorary degree--not for having served on the board, but it developed that I was on the list to get an honorary degree before I was elected to the Board of Overseers. As an Overseer you can't have any other connection to Harvard, so I got my honorary degree I think in 1985 and have kept the relationship with various parts of the university. I have come to know and work with Neil Rudenstein, the
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