David Boren and progressive politics in the Bible Oil Belt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boren


"Boren was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Christine (née McKown) and Lyle Hagler Boren. He graduated in 1963 from Yale University, where he majored in American history, graduated in the top one percent of his class and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

He was a member of the Yale Conservative Party, elected president of the Yale Political Union and is a member of Skull and Bones."
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Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who served with him, publicly stated that Boren should be elected president.[32] Boren's chief of staff was a respected Capitol Hill insider, Charles Ward, a former longtime administrative assistant to Speaker Albert.[citation needed]

Boren served on the Senate Committee on Finance and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.[33] He also served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1987 to 1993.[33] His six years is the longest tenure for a Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, tied with Dianne Feinstein. Boren sponsored the National Security Education Act of 1991, which established the National Security Education Program.[33][a]

Boren was one of only two Democratic senators to vote in favor of the controversial nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, in 1987.[34] Boren also decided in 1991 to vote against the Persian Gulf War.[35]

Boren was one of the President Bill Clinton's top choices to replace Les Aspin as a U.S. Secretary of Defense in 1994. However, Clinton selected William J. Perry instead.[36]

In a controversial public mea culpa in a New York Times Op/Ed piece, Boren expressed regret over his vote to confirm Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Partly as a result of that statement, The Daily Oklahoman, the largest newspaper in Oklahoma, which had encouraged and endorsed Boren's entire career, began intensely criticizing him.

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As chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Boren was instrumental in building consensus and bipartisan support for the U.S. State Department initiatives to promote democracy abroad which helped lead to the release of Nelson Mandela.

 Boren was praised and received a standing ovation led by Mandela at a special broadcast of ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel, which commemorated Mandela's historic release from prison in South Africa.

Boren is regarded as a mentor to former director of Central Intelligence George Tenet from his days as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.[45] On the morning of September 11, 2001, Boren and Tenet were having breakfast together when Tenet was called away to respond to the terror attacks.[46]

 Boren said that in the weeks before the Iraq War began in March 2003, he warned Tenet that since he was not a member of President George W. Bush’s closest circle of advisers, the White House would make him the scapegoat if things went badly in Iraq. "I told him they had your name circled if anything goes wrong," Boren recalls telling Tenet.

n June 2007, conservative political columnist Robert Novak claimed that Boren had met with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to discuss a possible third-party presidential campaign.

 Bloomberg had recently left the Republican Party, and speculation arose that he discussed the possibility of Boren joining him as a running mate.[48]

 However, on April 18, 2008, Boren endorsed the leading Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
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n March 2015, a recording was made public of members of the University of Oklahoma's Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity singing a racially derogatory song which used the word "nigger" and included reference to lynching and racial segregation.

 As university president, Boren appeared widely in US media and condemned the behavior, expelled two student members of the fraternity, and with the fraternity's national headquarters' help, ordered the OU chapter's closure. He also created a mandatory Diversity Training for the whole campus."

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On February 13, 2019, it was reported that the University of Oklahoma had hired the Jones Day law firm to investigate Boren after allegations of his "serious" misconduct arose at the university. The university and specifically the OU Board of Regents declined to specify whether the investigation was actually of Boren, or to specify its start or projected end date, instead referring to it generally as an ongoing personnel investigation.[58]

The investigation purportedly sought to determine whether Boren sexually harassed male aides during his tenure as president. 

The allegations arose from a Fall 2010 Boren fundraising trip to Houston in a private jet and hotel events afterward"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boren