After enduring months of partisan mudslinging and an intense beating from the media, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura needed a vacation.

Instead of catching a plane to the Bahamas, the former wrestler-turned-politician grew a beard and packed his bags for Camp Harvard, where he taught seminars, talked policy with late-night partygoers and wrestled Lecturer on the Study of Religion Brian C.W. Palmer ’85 to the floor of the Leverett Dining Hall.

“I’ve often described the trip to Harvard like rehab,” Ventura says in a phone interview from his home state. “It’s like a drug addict being able to go to the Betty Ford Clinic.”

Working as a fellow for the Institute of Politics (IOP), Ventura immersed himself in the Harvard community, attending classes, lecturing at an Expository Writing section and hosting weekly study groups in the Lowell Junior Common Room.

Now, having returned home to Minnesota, Ventura looks back at his months at Harvard with complete satisfaction.

“I never really had a college experience,” he says. “When I graduated high school, I went right into the U.S. Navy. After that, I just went to junior college on the G.I. Bill and I was living at home.”

When an offer from the IOP came in the mail last December, Ventura says he didn’t have to think twice about accepting.

“In light of the changes in my life, I had the opening to do it,” he says. “I needed to get out of Minnesota. I needed a break from here, to go to a different part of the country and really rejuvenate myself.”

After finishing his time as a Navy SEAL, he spent 11 years grappling for the World Wrestling Federation as his alter ego, Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

In 1984, Ventura became an actor—with a leading role in the movie Predator, among others—and before long, he had his own radio and television talk shows.

His political career began in 1990, when he was elected mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minn., and in 1998 he became the first Reform Party candidate to win the gubernatorial race in the state. He’s been coaching high school football since the end of his term in 2002.

Now, the menus at Bartley’s Burger Cottage list him as “Harvard’s newest professor” after Ventura insisted the owners add him to their list of sandwich celebrities. With his fellowship behind him, the jack-of-all-trades can add yet another occupation to his eclectic résumé.

“The thing we were most impressed by is this idea that you can come from a life that is very much not a traditional pathway to politics,” says Ryan D. Rippel ’04, one of six student liaisons from the IOP who worked directly under Ventura. “He was not going to be a career politician. He was someone who felt the need for his leadership, so he stepped up to the plate and ran.”

A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW

Despite his celebrity status, Ventura spent his days at Harvard living in an unassuming apartment building across the Charles River and working from his office at the Kennedy School of Government, where he prepared for his seminars, held 16 office hours a week and learned how to use a computer.