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Professor Hoyt Purvis reads a 1970s Soviet newspaper
in which he was featured March 31.
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Hoyt
Purvis sits on his desk in an office that has accumulated every
newspaper he has ever read and every piece of paper he has ever
received. His office has been described as “one of the wonders of the
world” by long-time friend Skip Rutherford, who suggested it be opened
to the general public for tours.
“The
same empty Diet Coke can that I encountered on my first visit stayed in
the exact location for at least three years,” said Rutherford, Dean of
the UA Clinton School of Public Service.
After more than 30 years teaching at the UofA, Purvis, 76, will retire at the end of this semester.
Purvis has become a fundamental
part of the journalism department during his time at the UofA. He has
brought his personal experiences, knowledge and passion to the
university, former UA chancellor Dan Ferritor said.
“He lived out his passions each day through educating us,” said Brandi Moore, senior advertising and public relations student. “At
the time, you might have thought it was silly that he took the time to
check roll on each and every row of his lecture hall. But looking back, I
see it more of a notion that he truly cared about who was there, who
was willing to learn about something he enjoys, who was committed to
being a journalism student. It was his way of rewarding those for their
commitment to him.”
Although Purvis has followed a
career in journalism, he is also recognized by his distinguished career
serving as press secretary and special assistant to Sen. J. William
Fulbright and by his position as council/senior adviser on foreign and
defense policy to Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd.
Purvis brought an enormous amount of recognition to the university, Ferritor said.
“When you look at the two
senators he worked with, Sen. Fulbright and Sen. Byrd, Hoyt was in the
midst of American politics and American relations and he brought it to
the university. How very lucky were we?” Ferritor said.
Purvis was involved in several
major events while serving as senior adviser for Sen. Byrd. In 1979,
Vice Chairman and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping visited Washington and met
with Sen. Byrd in his office.
Xiaoping was a very short guy,
Purvis said, and he was sitting in a big stuffed chair in Byrd’s office.
When the meeting was over and it was time to get up, Xiaoping was
having trouble getting out of the chair because his feet wouldn’t reach
the floor.
“So I decided the right thing to
do was reach over and give him a tug to get out of the chair,” Purvis
said. “I’ve always told my students that was my contribution to
U.S.-China relations,” Purvis said.
After attending the University of
Texas and moving on to graduate school, Purvis wanted to follow his
goal of working in Washington D.C. because of his interest in politics
and international relations.
“I admired Sen. Fulbright because
of his involvement with international relations, educational and
cultural exchange,” Purvis said. “I really wanted to work for Sen.
Fulbright.”
Purvis was in constant contact
with Lee Williams, the administrative assistant for Sen. Fulbright and
contacted him once he arrived in Washington D.C.
“The time came where I was going to have to either get a job with Fulbright or do something else,” Purvis said.
While visiting Washington D.C.,
Purvis had the opportunity to meet with Williams and sit in on a foreign
relations committee hearing about the Vietnam War. After the hearing
broke, Williams asked Purvis to go back to Fulbright’s office and have
lunch. At the end of the lunch, Purvis was offered the job as press
secretary. He was 27 years old.
“He told me later on that Sen.
Fulbright wanted to make sure that I was the right man and they had
already decided before the luncheon that they were going to offer me a
job,” Purvis said.
While Purvis was press secretary
for Sen. Fulbright, Washington D.C. was overseeing matters related to
the Vietnam War and other issues such as the Watergate affair.
“Every day was a busy, busy day,” Purvis said.
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| Hoyt Purvis and Sen. J. William Fulbright speak in 1986 at the UofA. |
After being Fulbright’s secretary
for six years, Purvis decided to leave Washington D.C and go back to
Austin, Texas, to be on the faculty at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of
Public Affairs and work on some projects, Purvis said.
“One of the things that was most important about the whole experience – Fulbright was a great guy to work for,” Purvis said.
Before becoming senior adviser
for Majority Leader Byrd, Purvis worked on the Carter campaign and
contemplated going back to Washington D.C and becoming part of the
administration.
Then, he got a call from Byrd.
“He wanted to play a major role
in foreign and defense policy matters and I had been recommended to him
as someone who might be the staff member responsible for foreign and
defense policy,” Purvis said.
After meeting with Byrd he was
offered the job as council/senior adviser and foreign and defense
policy. While working for Byrd, Purvis became a key figure in “many of
the major foreign policy issues at the time,” Purvis said.
“I worked on the Panama Canal
treaties, U.S.-Soviet relations, U.S.-China relations, Middle East, lots
of big issues and had the opportunity to travel with Sen. Byrd to meet
many of the important world leaders of that time,” Purvis said.
Purvis reflected on some of the
experiences he was a part of while working for Sen. Byrd such as trips
to China, the Middle East, Egypt, Japan and meetings with world leaders
like Leonid Brezhnev and Anwar Sadat.
“We spent the 4th of July of 1979
meeting with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev,” Purvis said. “We flew on a
special Soviet plane down to that region and we traveled over to the
area where Brezhnev was staying and we were riding in the big black
limousines, they cleared all the traffic off the roads, right in the
Black Sea.”
Purvis worked with Sen. Byrd full
time for more than four years but kept working on side projects for
years after he left Washington D.C.
“I went back to UT and I was
teaching there again but also working on some projects in Washington,”
Purvis said. “Writing reports and speeches for several years after
that.”
Purvis’s long legacy and
remarkable experiences began years before he arrived at the UofA in
1982. A graduate from the University of Texas, Purvis served as sports
editor and editor of the Daily Texan.
“You’re 20 years old and you’re
the editor of a daily newspaper and writing editorials and covering
stories and meeting people,” Purvis said. “I got to meet Martin Luther
King and a lot of other interesting and famous people. It turned out to
be a very good thing.”
During his time at UT, Purvis
participated in the Texas-Chilean student leaders exchange where he was
able to study at the University of Chile in Santiago.
“That was my first extended time
abroad and I learned a lot from that experience and that had a lot of
impact on my life,” Purvis said. “In a sense, I found out there was a
lot to see and know in the rest of the world and it was important to
understand the rest of the world.”
After receiving his bachelor’s
degree and leaving UT, Purvis studied as a graduate student in France on
a Rotary Fellowship for a year. He then went on to Nashville,
Tennessee, where he became a graduate student at Vanderbilt and worked
on reporting about school desegregation in the south, Purvis said.
Other aspects of Purvis’s journalistic career included his work as a political reporter for the Houston Chronicle. In the last 20 years, Purvis has written
regular political and public affairs opinion columns for Northwest
Arkansas newspapers. He has also done political commentary for the local
KNWA station for the last 15 years.
Before becoming part of the
faculty at the UofA, Purvis encountered his first teaching experience in
Kenya where he taught journalism and was able to travel through most of
Africa.
“I was continually in the process
of trying to understand what was happening in the world, why it was
happening and what it might mean,” Purvis said.
Though he was dividing his time between Austin and Washington D.C., his loyalty was still in Arkansas, he said.
“I was really happy when I had a chance to come back to Arkansas and when I came back, I didn’t leave,” Purvis said.
Purvis came to Arkansas during
the commemoration for Sen. Fulbright. After his visit, the dean of
Fulbright College contacted Purvis.
“He asked me if I would possibly
be interested in being in the faculty here and to devote some time to
help establish Fulbright Institute,” Purvis said.
After his arrival, Purvis began
his work as director of Fulbright Institute of International Relations
from 1982 through 2000 and started the International Relations major at
the UofA.
“I’m very proud of the success
that it has had. I’ve put a lot of effort and energy in that because I
thought it was extremely important,” Purvis said. “Especially in a
college honoring Sen. Fulbright, it seemed to me very important to have a
strong international relations academic program.”
He worked on strengthening
international emphasis on campus and assisted DeDe Long, director of the
Study Abroad Office, in helping the study abroad program become
stronger.
During his time in the journalism
department, he has taught thousands of students through Media and
Society, a prerequisite for all journalism sequences. It is the first
class journalism students attend where they are introduced to the
various types of media and where they learn the importance of it in
today’s society. Purvis has become one of the first journalism
professors students encounter when starting work on their journalism
degree.
“He is such an exceptional
professor. When he speaks, you are compelled to listen to what he says
because he has had so many interesting experiences in his life,” Moore
said. “His wisdom on politics, media and foreign policies is admirable.
He has influenced me to engage myself deeper into our new realm of media
especially in connection with politics.”
Read the full article by Andrea Zepeda with the Arkansas Traveler
