Seattle Leadership School Great Success

Students from as close as the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific joined those from as far away as Portland State and Gonzaga University at the highly successful first Federalist Leadership School held throughout the day of December 9, 2006 at the Reanissance Seattle Hotel. The school was under the auspices of the Bellevue University Federalist Leadership Center and was co-sponsored by the Washington Policy Center of Seattle. The hit of the day was a luncheon speech by syndicated writer and Fox television commentator Robert Novak on the relevance of the founders federalist principles to events in today’s Washington, D.C., a city he has covered as a working journalist for over 50 years.

The luncheon was attended by students and local notables including the chairman of the Washington Policy Center, Sarah Rindlaub, and its president Daniel Mead Smith. Also at the event were the president of the Discovery Institute and former Washington Secretary of State, Bruce Chapman, Barbara and Jim Kenney, and many other prominent members of the community. Professor Donald Devine, Ronald Reagan’s former personnel chief and director of the Center, headed the lecture team, which included popular Seattle radio talk show host Kirby Wilbur and Reagan Ranch Presidential Scholar Floyd G. Brown.

Barbara and Jim Kenney with Bob Novak and KVI’s Kirby Wilbur The Center and its schools are based upon the principle that true leadership must rest upon philosophical understanding, specifically upon the federalist thinking of America’s founders. The United States can only be successful if these principles-- illustrated best by its greatest founding writing, The Federalist Papers--are as viable and central to its leaders and citizens today as they were at the nation’s birth.

Student leader at the UW, Daniel Murdock, called the school “one of the great experiences of my life, a philosophcal point of view that is simply not avaliable to students on most college campuses today.”