Stage Presence

When hundreds of professionals from higher education met in New Orleans Feb. 20–23, they filled a ballroom at the Marriot Hotel for the final presentation of the conference — an onstage interview by Tulane President Scott Cowen with political analysts and authors Mary Matalin and James Carville. Carville is a professor of practice in the Tulane political science department.

Cowen, left, takes the moderator's chair as he interviews Matalin and Carville at a regional conference of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Challenged by Cowen to give advice to the assembled group of college and university fundraisers, Carville said, “Be enthusiastic about your school. You are selling difference in people's lives.”

Matalin said she and Carville moved to New Orleans because “we want to raise our kids here.” Discussing the city's recovery after Hurricane Katrina, she praised the tireless work of New Orleanians to save their city, “by little acts of people who wanted to live here and be here.”