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In Western Mass., Kerry Avoids Talk Of 2020, Kavanaugh

Former Secretary of State John Kerry speaks Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018 at Mount Holyoke College.
Jerrey Roberts
/
Daily Hampshire Gazette / gazettenet.com
Former Secretary of State John Kerry speaks Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018 at Mount Holyoke College.

At a talk at Mount Holyoke College on Tuesday night, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry did not directly weigh in on the accusations of sexual misconduct brought against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

It was part book tour, part history lesson, part political pep talk.

In the questions Kerry took from students and faculty, nobody asked whether he’d make another run for president in 2020. (A new Boston Globe poll found he'd have some support in Massachusetts.)

Kerry did urge the audience to get to the polls this November.

"I am convinced if people go vote and we restore facts -- not alternative facts -- to the political dialogue of our country, we will regain our country and our future," Kerry said. "And we need to do it."

Kerry, who spent 28 years in the Senate, attacked the chamber, with a brief mention of the big news of the week.

"There’s nothing happening in the United States Senate today," he said. "All gamesmanship on a daily basis; Kavanaugh, whatever the hell it is. They are not getting the job done for people, because they can’t."

Nancy Eve Cohen is a former NEPM senior reporter whose investigative reporting has been recognized with an Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Hard News, along with awards for features and spot news from the Public Media Journalists Association (PMJA), American Women in Radio & Television and the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has reported on repatriation to Native nations, criminal justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, linguistic and digital barriers to employment, fatal police shootings and efforts to address climate change and protect the environment. She has done extensive reporting on the EPA's Superfund cleanup of the Housatonic River.

Previously, she served as an editor at NPR in Washington D.C., as well as the managing editor of the Northeast Environmental Hub, a collaboration of public radio stations in New York and New England.

Before working in radio, she produced environmental public television documentaries. As part of a camera crew, she also recorded sound for network television news with assignments in Russia, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.
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