In progress for the Baker Center at the University of Tennessee

In 2001, Congress authorized the University of Tennessee to receive a grant creating an endowment to establish the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.

As a U.S. senator, Reagan chief of staff, ambassador to Japan and one-time presidential contender, Howard H. Baker Jr. is remembered as “the great conciliator,” a politician whose intelligence, ethics and demeanor defied partisan politics and, instead, bridged support from all sides.

This same open-minded perspective continues to shape the Baker Center’s very own and very unique window on the world.

The center provides access to an extensive collection of distinguished political archives (including Senator Baker’s own papers), a 15-room interactive museum, white paper research and publications (engaging the scholarship of university students), a wide variety of inspiring public programs, and an outreach to students of all ages, using podcasts, videos and other web-based avenues of communication.


Year to year, the center gives rise to a sequence of rare experiences for students of government—the chance to participate in running dialogues between those whose policies and opinions currently shape our world and those who represent the next generation of regional and national leadership.

(Thanks to Katherine Key, Dennis McCarthy, and Carl Pierce, all of the university, for the chance to craft this overview piece and get involved with communications strategy for the Baker Center.)