Lipscomb students had the opportunity Thursday afternoon to sit-in on a discussion with Dr. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winning, presidential biographer.
Students took the time to ask Goodwin questions about politics, both current and past, and about her writing career.
“I felt like so many times in our lives as students, especially young people, we see people at the height of their success when everything is going for them,” senior and graduate student Mary Kathryn Charlton said. “We never really see them when they’re our age. Sometimes we can get really discouraged with what’s going on in our own lives, and we have to be patient like she said.”
Goodwin won two Pulitzer Prizes for biographies of American presidents and is considered an expert on the presidency. She has been a guest on TV shows such as Meet the Press, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and has given a TED talk. She has a passion for history and chooses her book subjects in part because of her curiosity about certain time periods.
She has also seen a fair share of American history. She was present at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech and vocally opposed the Vietnam War.
Dr. Goodwin was one of only five women in her doctoral program at Harvard and witnessed blatant sexism from professors. She was one of a small number of female fellows in President Lyndon Johnson’s administration.
After Johnson’s term ended, Goodwin assisted the former president with his memoirs. Her relationship and experiences with Johnson inspired her first of many presidential biographies, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, published in 1976.
“In terms of the whole writing process, the most important decision I make first as to who I’m going to study is do I want to live with this person for a period of time,” Goodwin said. “Because I could never write about Stalin or Hitler. I couldn’t bear the idea of waking up with them in the morning. And I am waking up with these guys and thinking about them when I go to bed at night.
“So I’ve always chosen somebody who I knew would have flaws but who basically I would feel a great respect for.”