79 JFK AND BEYOND

Lights, Camera – Glickman!

The announcement this past July that Institute of Politics (IOP) Director Dan Glickman would be leaving the Kennedy School of Government to head the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade organization representing America’s film and television industry, got the kind of attention normally bestowed upon, well, a Hollywood celebrity.

The choice of Glickman, 59, to become chief advocate for America’s major film studios was not, on the surface, an obvious one. A former congressman from Kansas (“the wheat state”) who served as U.S. secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration before coming to the IOP two years ago, Glickman seems more suited to the role of political veteran than movie bigwig. Yet it is his deep ties to Washington — where he has remained a senior partner at one of Washington’s most formidable law firms, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld — that made Glickman an easy front-runner in the search for a successor to outgoing MPAA President Jack Valenti, who is retiring after 38 years at the helm.

No one, perhaps, was more surprised by the choice than Glickman himself. “Frankly, I suspected they would pick a Republican for the job,” he says, considering that the White House and Congress are Republican controlled. Nor did he actively seek the position; they called him. Ultimately, it was his qualifications, not party affiliation, that got him the nod. “After all, the biggest part of agriculture is ‘culture,’” he quips. (He also can’t help dropping the name of a famous Hollywood producer he knows — his son, Jonathan Glickman.)

Glickman will be only the fourth person to head the MPAA since its founding in 1922. His iconic predecessor, the 82-year-old Valenti, once an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, was a vigilant defender of artistic freedom and the First Amendment. He fought against censorship (he created the present-day voluntary ratings system),
and also championed to open markets across the globe to American films and TV
programming.

In recent years, Valenti’s top priority was convincing Congress to pass or strengthen laws to protect the industry’s intellectual property (piracy accounts for some $3.5 billion in lost revenues annually), a charge Glickman will inherit when he officially takes over on September 1. Balancing issues of artistic freedom with the public’s concern over increasing sexual and violent content geared to younger audiences, will also be part of his new mission. So, too, will be expanding overseas markets for American films — a key ingredient, Glickman asserts, of America’s “soft power” in the world.

Despite being paid like a celebrity — as MPAA president he’ll earn a reported $1 million annually — Glickman says he will miss the Kennedy School. “Being IOP director is the best job I’ve had, in being able to do more to encourage young people to go into politics and public service. In many ways, the IOP is the crossroads of the political world.” — JB