Be sure to pay attention to what your professor says in class. Next week you could be hearing the same words out of the mouths of Bill Bradley, Al Gore '69 or George W. Bush.

While the upcoming presidential election is nearly a year away, campaigning for 2000 has begun in earnest, and already professors from the College and Harvard's graduate schools have begun to assemble behind their candidates.

Whether this is their first association with a campaign, or simply another step in a distinguished political career, these Faculty members have a hand in shaping election issues from crime to education to healthcare.

Driving the Issues

While the Harvard faculty can claim a hand in the three most prominent presidential campaigns in the nation, some professors admit to having a less influential role than others.

Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Emeritus Charles Fried, for example, describes himself as an "adviser on call" to Texas Governor George W. Bush. There are several issues that he thinks are important to the upcoming election--such as minority set-asides and the division of federal and state authority--his opinion has not yet been solicited on most of them.

"I think it's a question of being asked, and I haven't been asked yet," Fried says. "I wrote a draft of a position paper that hasn't seen the light of day…but it's still early days in the campaign."

Harvard professors, however, have a more direct role in Vice President Gore's campaign. Elaine Kamarck, executive director of the Kennedy School of Government's Visions of Governance Project, serves as Gore's principal campaign policy adviser and advises the Vice President on a wide variety of issues.