| I
 |
Hamilton Jordan |
Hamilton Jordan, who was President Jimmy Carter’s White House
chief of staff, is joining the University of Georgia, where he will
write a book about the Carter presidency based on near-exclusive
access to volumes of personal diaries Carter kept.
Jordan’s base of operations will be the Carl Vinson Institute
of Government, where he will have a temporary appointment on the
public service faculty. His appointment has been approved by the
board of regents.
Carter is letting Jordan use some 6,000 pages of material from
his diaries and other documents from his four years in the White
House. Carter wrote in the diaries every day and has closely guarded
them, allowing only one or two people to read them since he left
office in 1981.
Jordan also plans to interview more than 100 people who played
influential roles in Carter’s presidency, creating the most
comprehensive oral history in existence of Carter’s term of
office.
“From my perspective, there’s never been a real good
and comprehensive book about the Carter presidency,” says
Jordan, a key architect of Carter’s election in 1976 and one
of Carter’s closest advisers as chief of staff and assistant
to the president. “It’s been 25 years and people
are still interested in him and want to understand his time in the
White House, as well as his life before and since the presidency.”
Jordan, who received a political -science degree from UGA in 1967,
says working at UGA gives him access to library materials, advice
from faculty and assistance from graduate students. He will be available
to speak to classes, meet with faculty and students and make presentations
on campus.
When his book is published, Jordan will donate the recorded interviews,
his notes and other material to UGA, though Carter’s diaries
will remain at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
President Michael F. Adams says the university is pleased to support
a project of such historical significance.
“I have long admired Hamilton Jordan as an accomplished political
strategist and savvy thinker,” Adams says. “His addition
to our public service faculty will bring creative strength to our
public policy area, already recognized as among the best in the
nation, and his analysis of Jimmy Carter’s presidency will
be an important and lasting historical contribution.”
Jordan emphasizes that his book will be neither a biography of Carter
nor a scholarly history of the period he was president.
“I’m not a historian,” he says. “This will
be a book about the Carter presidency based on his own papers and
recollections, and the recollections of people who were crucial
to his presidency.”
|
