Kennedy: The Hope and Courage

“He gave us hope and the belief that we could change the world, not only could change, but must change it,” said journalist Ellen Hume of slain President John F. Kennedy at a panel discussion marking the anniversary of Kennedy’s birth. The conference Thursday at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, which included Kennedy’s son, John, and brother, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, was held four days before what would have been the President’s 72nd birthday. Hume, who is executive director of the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, remembered watching Kennedy’s inauguration as a 13-year-old and said he inspired her to pursue a career in journalism and led her brother to join the Peace Corps. Later, daughter Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg joined her brother and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in announcing the establishment of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, a $40,000 annual award that will be administered by the Kennedy Library Foundation. “President Kennedy became a symbol of justice and peace and showed us he had the courage to embrace the civil rights movement. And now, 25 years after his Administration, he still gives us the courage . . . “ said panelist Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader.

--Longtime journalist Bill Kovach, who left as editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after a much-publicized dispute with the newspaper’s publisher, has been named interim head of the Nieman Fellowship program at Harvard University. The program offers journalists who are in the middle of their careers a year off to study a topic of their choosing. Kovach replaces Howard Simons, former managing editor of the Washington Post, who is suffering from pancreatic cancer and has gone on a medical leave of absence. Kovach, 57, was with the New York Times for 18 years, including a stint as Washington bureau chief before moving to Atlanta.

--Former President Ronald Reagan joins Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill as a foreign associate member of France’s Academy of Moral and Political Sciences next month. Reagan will be inducted into the academy, which is part of the Institute of France, in a ceremony on June 15. The former President and Nancy Reagan will already be in Europe, as Reagan is scheduled to deliver the Churchill Lecture for the English Speaking Union in London on June 13. There are only 12 foreign associate members of the academy at any given time.