The NHIOP at 25: A Debt of Gratitude

Twenty-five years ago this week the New Hampshire Institute of Politics (NHIOP) opened at Saint Anselm College.

Now, thirty-five years into my own academic career, it is a good moment to remember the people who made it happen. Some have since passed on, and all of them left their mark on the institute and on those of us who worked alongside them.

Father Jonathan DeFelice, OSB, college president from 1989 to 2013, opened the campus to every candidate and provided strong and steady leadership throughout, without which there would be no NHIOP.

In 2006, the institute’s fifth year, he presented the President’s Award to Dale Kuehne, Anne Botteri, and me.

The late, great Father Peter Guerin, OSB, academic dean, gave Dale and me the course releases to do the work. U.S. Senator Judd Gregg secured the funding.

Dale, the first executive director, made endless trips to Washington to raise funds for the project through two bouts with cancer.

Anne carried the idea from the first memo through the board and later served as the second executive director. I served as the third, and Neil Levesque has been the fourth since 2009.

Others who made it possible include

• Abbot Matthew Leavy, OSB;
• the late Kevin Harrington, trustee, who asked the hard questions in 1998 and then became our strongest advocate;
• Father Mark Cooper, OSB, treasurer and later abbot;
• Jim Flanagan, director of development, who helped us secure the funding;
• executive vice presidents Gary Bouchard and Marie George, who brought the CNN debates to campus in 2007 and the back-to-back ABC/WMUR debates in 2008;
• trustees Bob Weiler, Bill Guerin, and Lucy Flynn;
• Silvia Shannon, first chair of the faculty advisory board;
• Cathy McLaughlin ’83, executive director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, who served on the study committee and gave us a working model to adapt;
• architects Steve Judge ’69 and Jim Skelton, Don Moreau, and Eckman Construction, who turned an old armory into the building we know today;
• Barbara Baudot and our politics colleagues;
• Heather Newman and Lorie Cochran;
• Margaret Golden Sheehan, who worked with Anne Botteri at the time;
• Anne Camann, who has worked with all four executive directors in her 21-year NHIOP career and retires in 2027;
• and Neil Levesque, executive director since 2009.

And especially the students, from Zach McLaughlin ’98, who first suggested to us that Saint Anselm should have an institute like Harvard’s and is now Superintendent of Schools in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to everyone else who has walked through the doors since.

After 25 years, the mission to educate, engage, and empower citizens continues, thanks to them and countless more.