“He said don’t try to be funny. You have to work really hard. You can’t be funny,” says TeamFranken member Benjamin Wikler ’03-’04.

Franken’s skill at uniting the serious craft of politics with a touch of humor dates back to his high school days.

“I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam. It was important in our house,” Franken says, adding that he would team up with a classmate to make funny announcements during morning chapel in high school.

Franken continued to espouse his liberal principles at Harvard in the early seventies.

“When I was here, we were marching against the war and going to Washington and getting gassed and not going to class and striking,” Franken says. “But the kids now are political, too. These guys are pretty intense…[but] it’s a very concentrated group.”

Study group participant Noah McCormack ’04 says he believes that Harvard has more people who are left of political center, and those demographics may explain the large applicant pool.

“Being at Harvard, where there is an abundance of people who share the core assumptions of Al’s book, definitely provided reinforcement and helped us produce the vast amount of work necessary for the book,” McCormack says.

After two rounds of interviews, Franken selected 14 students for TeamFranken—nine KSG students and five undergraduates.

Although the group was geographically diverse, a good number of the students came from New York City, Franken’s hometown.

“We had the West Side and the East Side of New York covered, and even a little bit of downtown,” quips McCormack.

But member Andrew G. Barr ’04 says the team came together over the purpose of the book at the very first meeting, where Franken argued that the liberal bias in the media was a myth.

Wikler says when TeamFranken covered a white board with scribbled notes at their first brainstorming session, it seemed to foretell the overwhelming number of ideas that was to flow from the group.

Barr says it took a while for the nervous group to settled down.

“I felt like I had 14 students and I had to make sure their time was being used properly,” Franken says. “I felt this tremendous burden at first to make sure everyone had a good experience. Finally the students said, ‘Al, cool out.’”

Franken jokes that even though the KSG serves pizza with every meeting—he calls calling the Institute of Politics the Institute of Pizza—the group turned to another source for bonding: Franni Franken’s home cooking.