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May 3, 2007

Ex-President gives Meehan advice

Marty Meehan’s whirlwind tour as congressman-chancellor has been exhilarating and wearying over the past two weeks.
The double duty has seen Meehan rack up air miles shuttling from Lowell to Washington, D.C., with a side trip to New York City.
Take Saturday, April 26, for instance.
Meehan traveled from Lowell to the Big Apple to breakfast with Roy Zuckerberg, a top UMass Lowell donor, and then traveled crosstown to Harlem for a chat with former President Bill Clinton.
Later, Meehan flew to Boston to receive an award from the state’s Democratic Party, before returning to the nation’s capital at 8:30 p.m.
“I love what I’m doing but I’m exhausted from all the travel,” said Meehan, who takes over as UMass Lowell chancellor on July 1.
The two New York meetings were important.
Meehan met Zuckerberg at a small, popular Park Avenue restaurant. Popular? Sens. John F. Kerry, Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois were seated at nearby tables.
Zuckerberg is the son of a fomer Lowell mill owner. He graduated Lowell Tech and has donated more than $1 million to UMass Lowell through the years. Meehan said he gave Zuckerberg an update on the nanotechnology center and other future prijects. He said Zuckerberg is “psyched.”
For lunch, Meehan met with Bill Clinton at his luxurious high-rise Harlem office. Meehan spent 90 minutes with the two-term Democratic president.
He said Clinton was supportive of Meehan’s career transformation from Congress to academia. According to Meehan, Clinton said, “You can do a lot more good in that job for your area than you could as a member of Congress.”
“He was sharp as a tack,” said Meehan. “He gave me a thousand ideas” to enhance the biotechnology center and raise money for it. Clinton told Meehan to "go green," meaning develop clean, environmentally safe bio-tech projects that will be in great demand in the near future.
He also told Meehan about dozens of federal and corporate funding programs that are available.
Meehan said Clinton appeared fresh and upbeat. They talked only briefly about the war in Iraq. “(Clinton) said the original resolution (to go to war) was good for the country but the (Bush) administration hasn't played it right.”
Meehan and the former president have a good relationship, dating back to when Meehan stood strongly against impeachment proceedings during the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. Don’t be surprised if Clinton doesn’t become an occasional visitor to the UMass Lowell campus in the future.

Posted by JimC at May 3, 2007 4:09 PM