December 25, 2008 C-SPAN

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust celebrated Kennedy’s 46 years of “passion and compassion” in the Senate, fighting for improvement of the well-being of those in need by advocating better health coverage for workers, parity for the disabled, a higher minimum wage, reduction in the voting age to 18, better veterans’ benefits, and more funding for education. She quoted Kennedy as having lived by his maxim that, “The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs.” Faust lauded Kennedy’s dedication to the funding of education and biomedical research and elicited a laugh from the Senator and the crowd by stating that his greatest acheivement was quite possibly having scored a touchdown in the 1955 Harvard-Yale game.