to them at the world war ii museum so tonight we bow to the nation we will see the moment of american promise we will use these good times for great goals.

charter is proud to be recognized as one of the greatest internet providers and we are just getting started, building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it the most. charter along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. welcome to northeastern to celebrate the guest of honor. i am the chair of the department or if you will the last boss.

i was honored to witness the dedication to the students and faculty different keyboard the president of the massachusetts association. i wish i could say i've aged as gracefully as you have. at that time he wrote me a nice letter and i treasured it for 36 years. it wasn't the fact that the fact that the 12 days before the democratic national convention just days before what was arguably you made it a priority

to congratulate them on an achievement. i would like to read an excerpt from that. time, effort and skills to the people of your community as well as forla yourersonal and scholastic achievements. as an active example to others you've served to inspire the odwill and participation of many others. if i may i would like to echo the same words back to you today becausee they capture perfectly my own sentiments on this occasion.t it is fitting that we gather today on giving day on our campus when the university community comes together to support itself. i can think of no other individual who has given as much to this institution for as long as governor to caucus . in fact only very few come to

mind with a record of public service to this commonwealth and to this country that is as lengthy and distinguished as governor dukakis. service is at the very core of what michael dukakis is all about. it is who he is. he joined our faculty as the professor of political science in 1991. for 29 years, he helped to educate students and colleagues alike about public policy and leadership, about the value of public service in this great country and he's been an inspiration and a role model for all of us. we are proud and honored to celebrate him and his legacy today. on this special giving day at northeastern, it is our opportunity to give something back to you. our gratitude and profound appreciation. he's touched so many communities all across this country. as a fellow greek american i

would be remiss if i didn't express my gratitude to the governor for his special and an enduring commitment to his cultural heritage and to the greek american community at large. his example as an inspiration to so many of us and we could not to be more proud or more grateful. i thank my colleagues in the department of political science, the school of public policy and urban affairs and the college of social sciences and humanities and its new dean, kelly, and the office of the president for helping to organize such aak wonderful tribute today for governor dukakis. so let's begin. the master of ceremonies today is a dear friend and another shining example of greek american leadership and service, ernie anastosrn. a popular and celebrated new yorkn emmy award-winning

television news anchor and radio talkshow host.or he's published -- a published author of children's books and hall of fame broadcaster for over four decades as the top news anchor at abc, cbs and fox in new york. he is one more than 30 emmy awards and nominations and including the prestigious lifetime any awardy . he discovered the major news stories in new york and from political conventions and interviewed a long list of world leaders and celebrities. the signature programs include positively ernie heard regularly in his own nationally syndicated tv show positively america now seen on 200 tv stations including new york. a champion for positive and uplifting news with the commitment to inform, educate and inspire his followers and he happens to be a graduate of northeastern university and is happy to be here today to pay tribute to his special friend

and distinguished honorary. please welcome the master of ceremonies for today's symposium, new yorkk legend, ernie anastos. [applause] >> thank you. a little song and dance. my, my. look at your faces. i have to say one thing at the very get-go. get go. having reported news for over four decades and saying good evening and then saying why it wasn't, this is good news and i loveld this story and you should applaud your self and michael dukakis for this wonderful day bringing us all together. we love you. [applause] you know, i thrive on enthusiasm. about that just before w' came here because here is a guy that has a good heart. i'm honored to be here as an

alum of our beautiful university and to be sharing something that i truly believe in and that is honoring people and rewarding good behavior. so many times we reward bad behavior, gold stars and celebrities butve we have to reward the people that are doing good and that have done good in life and that is michael dukakis he deserves aap round of applaue for being a good soul. [applause] i've been in new york a long time but i am also a new englander born and raised in new hampshire not very far from here and we share that connection but in addition to that, i also happen to be greek american and we share that as well. we are so proud of you. yes, go ahead. i'm going to come over there. i like to walk around with a microphonehe.

maybe she was my teacher. very nice. you know you have such a wonderful family. your children are all here. a round of applause for his family. [applause] and your lovely wife is here with us in spirit and i know that she loved you and your children and family soan dearly and she's so proud of you right now because we do believe in something beyond this life and she sees it and she feels it and she hears it and we are proud of you. this is such a wonderful diverse country. people represented from all parts ofi the world. i love the diversity. when i think about that and i think about this greatee herita, he's been a role model in many ways for all of america but particularly as you mentioned for those of us of greek dissent. so, we share the common values that werero instilled in us from our parents, our grandparents

and our ancestors and they are very proud of you for what you've done. you've been a terrific role model celebrating the legacy today and for always. you know it's interesting when i was out there. we arere really in the mood her. i want to make sure you understand we are having a terrific day and when i heard about the program i said this is great we are going to be hearing so much, so many good things about michael and his administration and history. it's jampacked as we say here a rockstar agenda of speakers here to offer their personal reflection on the governor's legacyto so we are going to geto it right now. our first panel of the day focuses on the administration and contributions to the commonwealth of massachusetts as a three term governor hailed as

a national model and here today are a number of former members of his administration that help achieve what was called the massachusetts miracle. and starting this all off today is our first moderator for the panel and he is northeastern landmark. we had an opportunity to talk before.c he is a civic planner as you well know, civil rights and equity advocate, higher education administrator, arts and cultural researcherar, community engaged social activist in boston and nationally as well, and i want to walkd over here and talk to you for just a minute. now, you are in charge of the center. tell us a littleit bit about wht you're doing and what the headline is today. >> we are in the midst of doing ongoing research on economic development, transportation policies, gentrification, reparations.

we are working on communities and open spaces and sustainabilityou. >> i know the university is in a global environment these days. bring us there. tell us what the headline will be tomorrow and what you are planning on doingng. >> well, i can't predict tomorrow. it's hard to know what's going on at this moment. but it's clear that this university as it has become significantly more global is addressing issues of population migrations, artificial intelligence and how planning helps to improve the lives of people and communities, of community engagement and the ways in which we think about people that are dispossessed in the ways that they can become more directly involved in policymaking.

i'm pleased to be part of the school that is addressing those kind of issues in the context of the global university. >> continuing with our distinguished panel andst lookig forward to listening with you carefully. thank you so much. so, as some folks know, mike was my first boss in boston. i came to work at a law firm where he oversaw the training of emerging legal professionals and among us were folks named bill and dougal patrick. i think at the time we were almost certainly the only law firm in boston that was about to produce three governors to the commonwealth.

it was extraordinary, and he certainly gave guidance in terms of how we developed our technical skills, but i think more importantly his contribution to us was to give us a clear sense of what it meant to be an ethical and legal practitioner, an individual who understood the needs of clients but also understood the need of the profession and responsibility that we all had to make important contributions in terms of public service. so the time he spent subsequently within the academy i think inspired thousands and thousands of students to think of themselvess as ethical public servants, as individuals who are committed to a level and quality of service that distinguishes this university from many

others. i'm pleased that we have as panelists individuals who worked with mike within his administration andys can speak to those kind of ways in which policies are developed ethically, responsibly and unaccountably in terms of actually producing real outcomes, measurable outcomes. so i want to start withh jim snw and maybe you can tell us a little bit about how it is you came to be a part of the administration, what your work was anday what some of the takeaways were that you can look back on at this point. >> there is a better way to communicate -- there.

how's that. okay. sorry about that. so, rather than talking about the specifics, i thought really hard to put my relationship with the governor in the context of what i took away about him. so, what i tried to do is come up with a few descriptive words kind of like the free association test that represent what i think of my former boss so the first and mostob obvious is integrity.

this is the thing that distinguishes him from virtually every other politician you have to have been around before his administration to know that massachusetts deservedly had the reputation of being a corrupt state. he changed that culture and it has stayed changed. but that is just an enormous contribution for a whole generation of all the things that i could mention about insurance or whatever. the thing i'm most proud of his beingmi part of an administrati. second, the second word that comes to mind, trailblazer. when he was serving in the house and 62, most people just accepted as a truism that only an irish or italian middle-age male be the governor of massachusetts. not only did he smash that

barrier but he chose a lieutenant governor, the first woman to be in that office and you don't have to be told how that has flowered today. we had a black governor, a woman governor, bostonian, asian woman mayor. he deserves a lot of credit for that and that's kind of the second thing i want to thank him for. the third word that comes to mind is intelligence. someone once told me and i've it that aembered students become professors, be students can get rich but to see students run the world. anyone who served in his cabinet were commissioner like me knows that no matter what expertise you develop in a specific field when you want to talk to him he already knew more about the field and he never stopped learning. he just has a confidence in public affairs that almost no

one else has. just amazing to this day. this is the most resilient fighter that you can imagine who never lost an ounce of his will. [applause] he ran for attorney governor, renewal term as governor. it never changed him and his sense of mission to be honest, just never flagged and when his political career ended it went exactly the same and he put the same effort and same enthusiasm into teaching and correcting p papers, teaming up to help refugees and never tried to make

a penny to do this. he could have been a high paid lobbyist. wasn't in his dna. never lost his idealism or commitment to hard work for causes he believed in. second to last word because it would be an incomplete portrait if i p didn't paint the man in full. michael dukakis is anything but quirky but he did have one and maybe just this one and that is that he is incurably frugal. i member having lunch with him in his office and he knew the cost of a tuna fish sandwich from the concession part. and reimbursed me to the penny. he never complained about the cost of every barrier he passed when he drove around the state. and one vivid memory i have in

my first year working for him is that he asked me for advice on what to do with the salary that he was now receiving which might have been $50,000. this frugality saved and underfunded commonwealth of troubleses in those few years so it's not just a quirk. it turned out really well for the commonwealth so that brings me to my last and i will turn it back to ted. and that's not a word exactly, but the name and that is for those that are students of history to know that lucius, cincinnatus, who's been dead since 2,500 years, still conjures up a notion of noble sentiments civic duty and humility hardly ever matched. cincinnatus the roman state was granted enormous power in the period of crisis and then insisted on the returning to the manual chores and labor on his modest farm.

this was the crisis was over. well, that's michael dukakis. he's really, really powerful. but when he wasn't in government anymore, he could be seen on weekends scrubbing graffiti from the outer wallsoo of schools and public libraries, no civic task was ever toohi large or too smal for him like cincinnatus. he always cared more for the public good of them for his own glory or comfort. in my mind he is the very model of selfless devotion and massachusetts own a cincinnatus, cincinnatus, the ultimate citizen states. [applause] sorry for not talking about insurance, i really wanted to say that. [laughter]t. >> that is a tough act to follow. [laughter]

let me take that word from jim and i was the secretary of environmental affairs and secretary of economic affairs and i started thinking about what are the lessons that he taught all of us about how to work in state government and he brought into the environmental affairs what i saw was he encouraged us to work together and that came from the legislature because in the legislature you have to work with other legislatorse. to get anything done. so he took that lesson and brought it into state government in a way that was extraordinary and supported all of us as we did it. the one story i will tell you has to do with the environmental affairs secretary. i was reviewing the environmental impact report to build a huge hotel right across

from the public garden. that environmental impact report shows that it would cast a shadow on the public garden forever, not just the summer or the winter,r, but year round. and the wind tunnels at the front of the entrance would be prolific. if you look at that today and look close to it, you will find the transportationng building. and when you think anybody for not having shade on the public garden because he was the one who thought about and brought forth the alternative of that hotel. it took a lot for him to say no to the developer, the prominence prestigious developer but to go with our solution because he

worked so hard to get that to be a good replacement. and to this day i think of freddie and mike but it's a great attribution that comes from working together with another cabinet secretary and commissioners. the other lesson i will tell you is about he takes on the top tough stances and can say no. in the late 1970s, jimmy carter had just been elected and the oil embargo was hitting us in the stomach. what we found was everybody, the pressure was on to drill in the bank and to find some solutions to the oil shortage that we

contribute to in new england. if you look at that, what you found was there was a five day to one week supply of natural gas. the federal agencies had done their analysis. the fisherman and the fisherman's wives were coming into talk about the importance of the food supply on the georgia bank for the world and it's not just us but europe. so it is all to me to have it both ways if they could because he's been working it out, make this work if you possibly can and find the middle ground. again a lesson from the legislature about don't take the extremes here. find a way to have it all.

so we didid that and we tried to find the ways in which you could do all kinds of things. ultimately the oil industry stopped every single proposal that weos could possibly pu forth. and so, i went back into him to got to ther, we have federal government. and he says back to me that's really tough. he's calling me his favorite governor. but nonetheless, this man stood up and pursued this lawsuit because it was the only way through that. that took real courage. it took believing in what we had done every single effort we could make but also believing that in the best interest of the

quality of life that that is what we had to do and we won that lawsuit. so to me it stands tall when it comes to a matter ofen principle and decency and commitment to public interest. there's nobody stronger than i've ever seen. and that's been all the way through the 12 years i've had an opportunity to work with him. i admire and respect him. is tough but he stands as tall and strong as any political leader i've ever seen in the country. [applause] i agree with everything jim said and i'm proud to be part.

i'm going to say some little later things. he's done great work. speaking about frugality, i remember i was going to go talk to the governor about the fact that the credit card companies were not going to stay in our state if they couldn't raise their rates and it was going to be hard to tell him that this is proconsumer. and when i went and started speaking with him he said i don't think people should borrow money. and i said we are a lot of fun. we stopped the happy hours. [laughter] that's one memory. and then another was when i first started in the administration you said to me

because of allll of the regulatd industries, anyway, you said to me i only want to deal with you. i do not want to deal with the commissioners directly. i did that in my first administration. so, you could pick or at least recommend for all the agencies people accept for thehe racing commission and alcoholic beverage commission because that's where you could find the corruptionon and i thought that was very smart actually. so it was always a pleasure to work with him and learn from

him. [applause] they provided a tough act to follow. very inspiring comments. and jim articulating those words all of which apply. evelyn talkingc about the willingness to take on the tough fights and we are still. i wanted to say a few things about the issues that popped up during my tenure and how the

governor supported me. and by the way, historically there are pitch points between environmental secretary and transportation secretary. he was building things in the community that wasn't necessarily supportive of some of thosese efforts. one of the things the governor did is helped us sort out if you will these issues. but i do want to say that i can go way back to inspiration from

governor dukakis. i had a work-study job with agency called citizen housing citizen housing and planning association. and leading the charge to get a bill passed for affordable housing. and actually was kind of just a member of the task force within the housing and planning to come up with that. it gave me some feel first of all how the legislation is made and both the dedication and commitment but also the hard

work to pull something out of their hats so to speak and a tough legislature which wasn't necessarily excited about the notion. so that was the inspiration that gave me a feeling that public policy is the thing you can make a contribution and the governor i have to think for that. then i had another involvement with the governor. one of the things the governor did was to get them on the right track if you will after being kind of a haven and it's not a

gubernatorial appointment in line with the idea that important agencies like that are to be under an umbrella of policy. so as aac matter of fact. i didn't really know the assistant secretary but anyway he asked his approval and sent me over to the person who had a wonderful time in a leave of

absence i will never forget my boss called me up when he saw after the governor'st defeat and he said don't you think you better come back from your leave of absence. i said i'm going to get rid of those guys. and then the crowning opportunity i had when the governor appointed me the secretary. and i will tell one story in relation to that that shows this incredible insight launching midway through my tenure the water resource authority which was a difficult thing at the outset.

an 11 member board. people trying to think that the governor controlled the board because the secretary was the chair three members appointed and two other members who were nominated because we were concerned at the time about the water from being diverted. but anyway. so we went out with a national search to find an executive director and came back in a couple of my colleagues on the board a said we have to have an engineer. none of these policy wonk stuff.

we've got to have an engineer. and the majority of the boardd saying we have a guy that we ended up hiring and took his resume. he took one look and said he gets slaughtered in the legislature. it's good to be able to deal with people in the massachusetts legislature. he said i don't know him but i'm looking at thein resume. well, my colleagues on the board who had insisted the governor had recommended and within six

months a delegation from my board members came up to my office on cambridge street. you getet to fire that guy. the disaster. mys point is the governor saw right away in fact the director didn't want to talk to the legislature. he wanted the governmental affairs person to come up there. but it just took like five minutes. so, glad we got back on-foot because i feel it's important. one other thing i will say we

determined we knew if they ever went skyrocketing so we kept hammering away. we'ven got to clean it up. while i'm sad to say they turned that in 1988. and saying he presided over the speeches. but anyway we did get it cleaned up and m it was a tremendous achievement and i think that should be part of the many things we leave as a legacy.

we are running a bit behind schedule. so i'm going to pose a question to you. we have all been practitioners. i wonder what your takeaways might be for emerging those that come through a policy school. what is it that you think one could have learned in the context as a public administration and that you would pass on to the students going through a policy school today? >> limiting the amount of time would require a hook. [laughter]

let me eliminate some of the points f followed. first and foremost is integrity the day that we were sworn in. he swears in the governor's council which became the cabinet room. after the swearing in ceremony he brought us back into the governor's office is and said somehow i managed to get myself elected governor. i'm a politician it's my job to get elected and elected again. you've been hired to give the people in massachusetts and that's their only mission.

and i don't care if you hear from the chief of staff and if you hear from kitty, your hearing from me. and giving the best they could possibly have and not to get into the fundraising business. it was incredible. iw felt like i didn't know what to expect. the secretary was abe big jump p from the policy position. it was like lifting a thousand tons of your back to be told by the top guy this is what i want, total integrity and i will forever be grateful for the privilege of serving with you. but that's number one. and advice to students, pick someone honest to work for. working for a crook there's no wayme you can come out okay.

pick someone honest to work for there's other jobs but to choose who you work for is the first thing. second thing, the reference to picking up pieces of paper, the world is made of thousands of little things and so-called little people. and when he had those lunches where every agency in state government w was asked to nomine a worker that had done a great job, the public works like the people who died on that tragedy in baltimore, someone who was picking up trash and a couple of them died while i was secretary recognized the people who were

doing the job every day and they were recognized i forget how frequently it was named in memory who was a great human service secretary and colleague with thern governor at the kenny school but recognizing that it's not all policy. it's the person on the street picking up the trash, making things workk every day. it is reflective of that just to bounce it back at you. ted was the first person, michael dukakis appointed to the board after bob kiley back in the 75 period. those of you almost as old as me you may remember the only question for who got jobs was which power did you come from.

if you were italian you better have blue eyes and blonde and be able to fake it. you with you on the board and the leadership of the governor, we set up the lottery system for the hiring of bus drivers and positions and within ten years you walk onto a bus and see females, blacks. nothing against my best friend here, nothing against irish people, but there's a lot of us and it was instrumental in place that was one-dimensional in terms of thean people that workd there and sharing those.

on the frugality my grandmother made this terrific bread and i learned how to make it from her. she passed on so i make it every two or three weeks and occasionally i bring some for the governor. so he didn't make it the way that i did. he buys the bread machine and is being interviewed about how wonderful iterea is. running for president of the united states and talking about this wonderful machine. i get a call a couple of years ago. do you know what they are charging? it is outrageousou. do you still buy flour 50 pounds at a time from the brazilian baker next door? [laughter]d

sure. so i periodically buy it, split it up 45 for the governor, 25 but the frugality is very real. one other thing to go back which i think is an interesting story, whose name is now associated was a developer who convinced kevin white that the only way to get the boatop going when the federl government stopped sending money to cities was to give away outrageous amounts so that there would be enough profit.

so he convinces kevin that this is the right thing to do. it is outrageously high density planned p with all kinds of attributes. but that's what happens when you have the sideload government. that process didn't anticipate the backlash from henry lee and all the people who organized against it. i just blinked on his name, a good friend of the governor. he said this is the real problem but it's not just up to bill flynn who had the jurisdiction over the renewal plans and evelyn murphy who is the

secretary of environmental affairs. tell him to fund the streets with state and federal money and that will make the numbers work better so the governorr appointd a committee of the three of us to work on the diplomacy with the point person at the time and in that process we didn't give away density, we imposed height limits and there had been a couple of suspicious origins and i said okay this is it they are going to burn a couple of buildings and come in and claim hardship. i put in a strict level they can take it down but they can't build any more than what is being built now. and in the urban renewal plan we put in those limits and the plan

worked. what was the parking lot for what was then the playboy club with the four seasons club is respecting the height limit that was established. so the interaction of the different interests which the governor required having to meet once a week in the development cabinet so the labor issues and development issues. and that worked booking the silos and the only governor smart enough to do a version of that, i'm sorry i'm saying bad

things about some of the governors, was romney who put foy in charge of a similar sort of multi agency structure. but this great invention of governor dukakis kind of disappeared. people don't remember. it was a brilliant way to organize the government. but the other piece was every six weeks to two months, something like that. development cabinet would have to go out to outside of boston. he would make us go out and present and interact with people from the localr labor council, local chamber of commerce not one-on-one but with the local elected officials to get another

cross section of its looking at what these policies mean on the ground. how is it going to matter to people? it was a brilliant way to structure the government and the government did all that. and it's the reason. partrt of it was the governme structured to work, to not gridlock. one last anecdote that was the key to putting 2,000 workers in the area who would provide the purchasing power to make the rest of the development work so i went to the governor and tried the idea and said if you put

that in, the governor hasn't heard about this yet i don't know if i can deliver it but if the governor would support this building, does that give you what you need to bring these down to the height limits and forbes said if you do that that's the trick. our friend doesn't like mike, doesn't like me. and it stopped by coincidence. sometimes it is lock. by coincidence, the head of the local, old friend of my father's was retiring from the boston business and getting promoted to a vice president so there was a going away party with every

building tradesmen in the city attending it. the governor gives his speech anddsa says there's a building that's going to have jobs stuck out in the state house. get out there tomorrow morningn. everybody thinks he didn't know how to play that political game from all those yearsrs. that is what made it happen. that integration, the different aspects that we put together. he didn't micromanage every detail of the things. he insisted on the process partly breaking the silos and partly the periodic look at each metropolitan area from their point of view and to break down the silos and pilot up each metro area we had to go to. anyway, it was the honor of my life to work for your governor. thank you so much. [applause]

thank you all very much. [applause] ..