Labor & Employment Law

John Sweeney Named Harvard Fellow

By Tula Connell

AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney has been named a resident fellow for the spring term at Harvard?s Institute of Politics. When Sweeney retired as AFL-CIO president in September, he vowed to become a “union warrior at large,” and now he will share his more than 50-years experience in the U.S. union movement with Harvard students.

The institute is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and resident fellows participate in the intellectual life of the Harvard community and lead weekly study groups on a range of topics.

Sweeney, one of six resident fellows, will be joined by two mayors, Manny Diaz, former mayor of Miami and former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and Greg Nickels of Seattle, also former U.S. Conference of Mayors president. Michèle Pierre-Louis, former prime minister of Haiti, former Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) and Mary Catherine Andrews, a former Bush assistant and director of the Office of Global Communications, also are resident fellows.

In congratulating Sweeney, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

The Harvard Resident Fellowship offers John Sweeney an excellent opportunity to educate the nation’s next generation of leaders on the critical importance of unions. He will be a superb ambassador in representing union workers and their families.

Said Institute of Politics Director Bill Purcell:

This Fellows class represents every kind of public service at every level in our world today. Our students are committed to exploring paths to public service, and our spring Resident Fellows will be important guides.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).