Real Clear Politics has a story today on the bold personal style that New Jersey governor Chris Christie began to carve out as a student at the University of Delaware:
More than three decades ago, Leighton Lord was an overeager college freshman — or as he puts it now, “a smart-ass 18-year-old” — when he crafted a provocative thesis for a term paper in his honors-level American foreign policy class at the University of Delaware.
Military dictatorships in Africa, Lord argued, should be considered acceptable transitional governments, as long as their leaders agreed to transfer to democracy eventually.
At a time when Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned on Robben Island and the Reagan administration’s Cold War-style realpolitik set off protests on college campuses, Lord’s position did not sit well with many of his classmates. One young woman in the class chastised him for being a “fascist,” among other things.
Looking Back: Photos from Christie’s College Days
As the piling-on picked up steam, a cherubic-faced sophomore with a New Jersey accent rose to Lord’s defense.
Chris Christie, a junior political science major, rebuked the name-calling student for attempting to stifle debate in an academic environment and implored her to let Lord finish making his case.
Episodes such as that one left a lasting impression not only on Christie’s fellow conservative classmates (Lord has remained a friend of the New Jersey governor over the years), but also on left-leaning faculty members, who admired the feisty student’s precociousness and gall, even when they disagreed with him.
And they almost always disagreed with him.
“He was articulate and he knew quite a bit about the subject,” recalled Prof. Mark Miller, who taught the course. “This is when memories of the Vietnam War were still very strong, and probably he viewed my perspective on American foreign policy as excessively critical. But we were able to work together in a satisfactory way.”
Christie’s penchant for asserting himself aggressively on matters of principle has not diminished since his college days…
This piece offers an interesting snapshot of a young man who became a political star and who is at the center of so much controversy today–in the aftermath of the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal.
Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.
Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden
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