Howard G. Adams had a master plan for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) 150th anniversary celebration in Philadelphia in 1998. He had been invited to join a panel discussion, and arrived way before the bulk of the attendees in order to lay the groundwork for achieving his one goal: to shake the hand of then-president of the United States and speaker of the night, Bill Clinton. He plied anyone he could find working at the event with questions about Clinton’s entrance and exit and made sure to position himself directly in the path of the 42nd president.
Adams, author of 15 career and self-help books and former director of the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science based at Notre Dame University, frequently recounts this story ...
