Posted on 05/30/2002 8:30:22 AM PDT by Printers Angel
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A college class devoted to Bill Clinton's presidency, said to be the first of its kind, will be offered in his native state next year and a Republican will teach it.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock political science professor Margaret Scranton is developing the curriculum and will teach the class, slated to serve as the prototype for the planned Clinton School of Public Service at the Clinton Presidential Library. It will begin in January and was believed to be the first college class in the country on Clinton's life, school officials said Wednesday.
The Clinton school, part of the University of Arkansas system, and the library are expected to open in the fall of 2004.
"Because we can't begin classes there until 2004, the opportunity is right under our noses to begin doing things now," Scranton said.
Though the class will have access to former Clinton staff members and to presidential documents through a private Clinton foundation Web site, the foundation will have no role in designing the curriculum.
The course, "The Clinton Presidency," will touch on the achievements and travails of Clinton's political life - and the scandals and controversies that dogged his private life.
"This isn't a whitewash," said Scranton. "We're going to deal with the scandals and how you govern in the midst of it all ... the politics of personal destruction. That's part of the '90s."
Other class topics will cover Clinton's childhood days in Arkansas to serving as the state's governor to his relentless campaigns for president.
"As a Republican, it pains me to say we're talking about one of the most effective campaigners that the country has ever seen," Scranton said.
She hopes to attract speakers such as former NATO commander Wesley Clark, Bob Dole, Clinton lawyer David Kendall and even staunch Clinton critic Newt Gingrich.
"This begins Arkansas' academic study of the Clinton presidency ... and it does so before the library is actually opened," added Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton foundation.
Scranton said the course will change and adapt over time as Clinton's legacy develops. The records of the Clinton administration will tell the true tale of the American president from Arkansas, she said, not the lingering memories of a White House intern and a list of pardons.
Scranton said the subpoenas and lawsuits associated with the Clinton era have made presidential records more readily available than other presidents.
"The controversies, in a way, work in the historian's and academic's benefit," she said.
aka Sleaze-101
I suspect it will be, otherwise it would be part of the School of Criminal Justice.
Betcha this class doesn't last too long....as the legacy continues to go DOWNHILL and the TRUTH is OUTED....it will disappear, lest we know the REAL CLINTON. The "intern and pardons" are the LEAST IMPORTANT of which will become known, and therein will lie the reason for the demise of this sorry course.
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