Upper school history teacher Peter Sheehy (Print Managing Editor Will Sheehy ’22, Tate Sheehy ’24) hosted Marc Adelman, friend to the late Kansas Senator Bob Dole, Dec. 6.

Dole was a politician and Republican Leader of the Senate for the final 11 years of his time in Congress. Before serving in the Senate for 27 years, he served in the United States House of Representatives for eight years. He was also the Republican Presidential nominee in 1996. Adelman spent time working for the Dole Foundation before Dole passed away due to advanced lung cancer, according to CNN Politics.

Olivia Feldman ’22 said she found Adelman’s connection to Bob Dole interesting, and she enjoyed hearing about Dole’s political career. She said Adelman had intriguing thoughts about the increasing amount of polarization.

“It was very interesting to learn about Bob Dole’s impact on politics and how he changed congressional methods of policymaking,” Feldman said. “[Adelman] had great insights about modern politics and the polarization of today’s political landscape.

Paris Little ’22 said she felt Adelman’s proximity to Dole and his family made his presentation more personal.

“We don’t have speakers come into class often, so when we do, it’s always nice to hear from a perspective that comes from outside of our own community,” Little said. “I think it was especially interesting to hear from Mr. Adelman because he had more of a personal connection to the Dole family, so we got to hear from a perspective that we probably wouldn’t have heard had we been reading about Bob Dole in the news and had a conversation just between the members of our class.”

Sheehy said he brought Adelman to his AP U.S. Government and Politics class because of the relevance to the class’s exploration of Congress.

“Since Marc does work for the Dole Foundation and had recently spent time with the Doles just before Bob Dole died, I thought it would be interesting for him to talk about Dole’s career as a way of examining how Congress used to function,” Sheehy said. “Marc spoke about the differences in partisanship during Dole’s era and now. Also, Marc emphasized that Bob Dole is part of a passing generation of leaders who were profoundly shaped by the Great Depression and World War II.”