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Indiana State University

Indiana State University (ISU) is a public university in Terre Haute, Indiana. It was founded in 1865 and offers over 100 undergraduate majors and more than 75 graduate and professional programs. Indiana State is classified among "D/PU: Doctoral/Professional Universities".

History
Indiana State University was established by the Indiana General Assembly on December 20, 1865, as the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute. Its location in Terre Haute was secured by a donation of $73,000 by Chauncey Rose. As the State Normal School, its core mission was to educate elementary and high school teachers.

The school awarded its first baccalaureate degrees in 1908 and the first master's degrees in 1928. In 1929, the Indiana State Normal School was renamed as the Indiana State Teachers College, and in 1961, it was renamed Indiana State College due to an expanding mission. In 1965, the Indiana General Assembly renamed the college as Indiana State University in recognition of increasing student population and expansion of degrees offered.

A seminary building was constructed and later used for Vigo Collegiate Institute. After several years the school closed and the property sold to be part of a public institution of education. It is now part of the Indiana State University campus.

Campus
The Indiana State University main campus is located on the north side of Terre Haute's downtown business district and covers more than 200 acre in the heart of the city. The main campus comprises over 60 brick and limestone buildings, halls and laboratories. Efforts to beautify the campus continue: a section of Seventh Street that runs by the university has been converted into a boulevard with flower beds and antique light posts; the old power plant was razed in 2002 and replaced with a modern facility; Stalker Hall reopened in fall 2005 after a complete renovation; Normal Hall, a Neo-Classic building erected in 1909, originally served as the library, was newly renovated in 2015. In 2009, the university dedicated a more than 109000 sqft Student Recreation Center, financed via private funding and student fees, and the Bayh College of Education was relocated to the newly renovated, historic University Hall. The Scott College of Business has relocated to the renovated former Terre Haute Federal Building, a classic Art Deco building built in 1933. In fall 2019, the Fine Arts Building was rededicated after a $15 million renovation begun in the summer of 2018. The Hulman Center athletic arena is currently (summer 2020) being renovated at an estimated cost of $50 million.

The Indiana State University field campus is an outdoor teaching, learning, and research area designed to accommodate educational programs and services. The field campus is located on 93 acre approximately 18 mi east of Terre Haute near Brazil, Indiana, and includes eight man-made lakes.

Fairbanks Hall
Fairbanks Hall serves not only as an academic space for learning but also as a performance and fine arts venue. The Bare-Montgomery Gallery located inside provides students with the opportunity to exhibit their work or to curate exhibitions of student work.

Fairbanks Hall serves as both a working art studio as well as gallery space for the art department of Indiana State University. Originally built as a Terre Haute public library in 1903–06; it is an outstanding example of Beaux-Arts architecture and constructed entirely from Indiana Limestone.

In 1903, Fairbanks offered to construct a new public library on a site the city would provide; it was to be named in honor of his mother Emeline Fairbanks. Terre Haute acquired a parcel of land at Seventh and Eagle Streets by May 5, 1903, and the groundbreaking took place on March 15, 1904. On August 10, 1904, the cornerstone was placed. A time capsule containing the history of the building, as well as a list of city and university officials, photographs of the namesake Fairbanks family, a copy of the program for the ceremony, copies of the city's newspapers and a 1904 Terre Haute city directory.

The informal opening and dedication of the completed building took place on April 29, 1906. On Saturday, August 11, 1906, a formal ceremony to open the building to the public was held, the following Monday, the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library opened to the general public.

In 1978, Indiana State University took ownership and following its renovation, it was named Fairbanks Hall in honor of the prominent Terre Haute businessman and philanthropist, responsible for its original construction, Mr. Crawford Fairbanks.

Normal Hall
Originally built as the library in 1909, Normal Hall is the last remaining structure from Indiana State's Normal School era. Normal Hall served as the university library until Cunningham Memorial Library was built in 1974 and named in honor of Indiana State's first Librarian, Arthur Cunningham (1891–1928). On the centennial of Normal Hall's construction, it was announced that it would be fully remodeled and will become a student academic honors center. The 2014–15 renovation was approximately $16 million; the original grand staircase and a stained-glass dome featuring images of at least 24 educators and philosophers were restored and the building now meets ADA requirements.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Center for Student Success (CFSS)
The Center for Student Success, housed within Normal Hall, provides tutoring, supplemental instruction, mentoring, advising, classroom instruction, counseling, and academic success workshops.

The center also provides specialized support programs including the 21st Century Scholar Corps Program, First-Generation Program, Summer Career Exploration Program (SCEE), Students in Transition Program, and Student Support Services Program which includes assistance to persons with disabilities and special needs, and first-generation, low-income students.

University Hall
The Indiana State Teachers College Laboratory School was a PWA-funded project, built on land donated to the university by the City of Terre Haute. The initial wing of the building was completed in July 1935. The Sycamore Theater and a gymnasium were completed in 1937 through funding provided by an additional PWA grant. Terre Haute-native Gilbert Brown Wilson added several murals to the interior. The laboratory school operated as a unit of the Vigo County School Corporation. In 2008–09, it was renovated at a cost of $29.8 million and became the new home of the Bayh College of Education.

The Bayh College of Education houses:
 * Administrative Placement
 * Audiology Clinic
 * College of Education
 * Blumberg Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Special Education
 * Department of Communication Disorders and Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology
 * Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Media Technology
 * Educational Assessment, Research, and Evaluation
 * Department of Educational Leadership
 * Department of Elementary, Early, and Special Education
 * Indiana Principal Leadership Institute
 * Instructional and Information Technology
 * ISU Educational Development Council
 * Teacher Licensure
 * Porter School Psychology Center
 * Professional Development Schools Partnership
 * Rowe Center for Communicative Disorders

Students
For fall 2023, minority student enrollment was 2,359, which represents 29.22% of total enrollment. The top three international student countries are India, Nigeria, and Ghana. Vigo and Marion County are the two largest counties that enrolled students originate from and approximately 57% of enrolled students originate from the state of Indiana.

Indiana State was the first public university in Indiana to require incoming freshmen to have a laptop. ISU first awarded laptop scholarships to incoming freshmen with high school GPAs of 3.0 or higher (on a 4.0 scale), giving students the option of choosing either a laptop or an iPad. The university now awards a laptop computer to those students who are admitted and are Pell-eligible as determined by the FAFSA.

Colleges
ISU offers more than 100 programs in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Business, Education, Technology, and Health and Human Services. The College of Graduate and Professional Studies offers programs that lead to doctoral and master's degrees. Students can also pursue certificates in a concentrated area of study, enroll in professional development courses, and fulfill continuing education requirements. ISU also offers 20 bachelor's degrees, 22 master's degrees, and 7 doctoral degrees—in addition to many professional certifications—available through Indiana State Online.

Indiana State University is organized into six academic colleges:
 * Bayh College of Education (est. 1865)
 * Donald W. Scott College of Business (est. 1918)
 * College of Graduate and Professional Studies (est. 1961)
 * College of Arts and Sciences (est. 1962)
 * Bailey College of Engineering and Technology (est. 1962)
 * College of Health and Human Services (est. 1963)

ISU is also a member of the College Consortium of Western Indiana. This membership allows students who are full-time at their home institution to take classes at the other member institutions of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College.

Library
The Cunningham Memorial Library collections include more than two million items. Undergraduate students may check out most materials for a three-week loan period, using their student ID.

Accreditation
Indiana State University as a whole has been accredited by The Higher Learning Commission continuously since 1915. The Scott College of Business is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and the Bayh College of Education is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). The doctoral program in clinical psychology (Psy.D.) is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA). The School of Music is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). The nursing programs are accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN). The Bachelor in Social Work program and the Master in Social Work program are both accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). The Doctor of Athletic Training program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE).

Campuses
Indiana State University-Evansville (now University of Southern Indiana) was created as a branch campus in 1965. Like Ball State University, it became an independent institution of higher education when it was granted independent standing as the University of Southern Indiana in 1985.

Student Media
Student Media was created in 2012 in a merger of Student Publications and electronic media outlets under Academic Affairs. Since then, in addition to operating the Indiana Statesman, Sycamore Video, and WISU-FM; Student Media has grown to include The Sycamore, a digital yearbook; Sync Creations, a client-driven video and web production group; the Indiana State Sports Network, which produces video for ESPN3 and ESPN+; WZIS, a student-staffed station created when WISU converted to a public radio format; and the Center for Innovation in Technology and Digital Media. While the center is the newest venture, Student Media outlets have been a part of the Indiana State experience for decades. The Statesman dates back to 1895 and WISU first went on the air in the early 1960s. The Sycamore, long an institution at Indiana State, was suspended in 1993 and revived in 2013–14.

Donaghy Day
Named for Fred Donaghy, graduate of the Normal School (1912) and a professor of life sciences, this tradition was initiated in 1976 as a day set aside for the community to celebrate the season and to work to help beautify the campus and surrounding community; Donaghy Day is now conducted during the first week of the fall semester and is used to acquaint new students with the university's commitment to community engagement.

Homecoming
ISU's homecoming dates back to December 15, 1917, when Birch Bayh Sr. asked Charlotte Burford, Dean of Women if State could have a Blue and White Day similar to DePauw's Black and Gold Day. At that time it was merely an alumni reunion with the big event being the alumni varsity basketball game. The start of Blue and White Day began December 3, 1921, which included religious exercises, "The Alumni Welcome", a performance by the school orchestra, a pep session, noon luncheon, and the alumni varsity basketball game. Homecoming 1922 brought the addition of "Friday Night Affair" which was a theater party and pep session held at the Indiana Theater. The start of what is now the largest student-organized parade in the nation was December 8, 1923. "The Spirit of Normal," drawn by two white horses was the winning float, with the honor going to Omega Sorority. The annual bonfire and football game was added to the activities in November 1935. Going up against Rose-Poly (now Rose-Hulman), ISNS, won 25–6. It wasn't until sometime in the mid-30s that "Homecoming" was officially adopted as the actual name for the annual celebration.

1937 marked the first year that a Homecoming Queen was crowned. That honor went to Bette Whitmore of Kappa sorority (now Alpha Omicron Pi). The Bachelor of the Year became a part of Homecoming from 1974 to 1989. In 1992, a major change occurred in the traditional contest to diversify and become more inclusive of the student body. The Sycamore Court replaced the Queen and Bachelor of Year to include one female and one male representative from Greek, Residence Hall, African- American, International, Commuter, and Graduate students. It was decided to discontinue the contest entirely in 1993, due to few students participating in the voting of candidates.

The Sycamore Cup Tricycle Derby, a ten-lap race, was added to the growing list of events in 1963. Students rode children's tricycles around the "Quad." The winners were Reeve Hall for the women and Parsons Hall for the men. The popularity of the race became such that students wanted to make the event more prestigious. Thus, in 1967 larger tricycles were customized using frames from Sting-Ray model bicycles. The race moved from the Quad to Marks Field adding more laps and introducing exchanges to make it more competitive. Riders then began conditioning exercises and practices. Due to resurfacing of Marks Field in 1992, the race was moved to ISU's Driver Education Center at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds located five miles south of campus. Today, the race is held at Recreation East which was dedicated in Spring 2000 as the new home for Trike and Tandem races. During the 2005 Homecoming Tricycle Derby festivities, the Michael Simmons Student Activity Center and Susan M. Bareford classroom were dedicated. This building, which is adjacent to the Recreation Track, serves as the headquarters for the two races as well as provides much needed multipurpose space.

The annual Blue and White Dance was always a popular formal dance held either in the Mayflower Room of the Terre Haute House or the Heritage and State Rooms in Tirey Memorial Student Union. Sycamore Showcase replaced the dance in 1968. The first year featured trumpeter Al Hirt with the Tijuana Brass. Throughout the next few years, performers included Bill Cosby, Dionne Warwick, Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, Johnny Carson and Doc Severinsen, and Bob Hope. For several years the Sycamore Showcase was replaced with smaller comedy shows because of the difficulty of getting big-name talent to book on specific dates and their reluctance to appear in smaller venues.

Major events today include a campus-wide Blue and White Homecoming Parade, Sycamore Tricycle Derby, Stompin', Torchlight Parade, Pep Rally, Tent City, and the Football Game.

The Walk is an Indiana State Homecoming tradition that began in the late 70s. The Walk begins at 6AM on gameday when a large number of students, reaching in the thousands, make the two mile walk east on Wabash Avenue towards the Football Stadium stopping and having a drink at each bar along the way. In recent years Indiana State University has launched new program to make the walk safer for all. In 2009, the university launched “SoberRide” and “Designated Walker” programs for homecoming. The walk also coincides with the Blue and White parade that runs throughout downtown Terre Haute on game day.

The Walk can be traced back to the late 1970s when students walked from Saturday night football games back to campus, stopping for a beer at every establishment that served beer on Wabash.

Founders Day
Conducted in January or February of each year, this event commemorates the opening of the institution in 1870 when 23 students presented themselves to a faculty of three on the first day of classes at the Indiana State Normal School.

Mascots
The school has had two mascots. Early on in the school's history, the athletes were referred to as the "Fighting Teachers" until the students chose the name "Sycamores", from the abundance of Sycamore trees in Indiana and especially in the Wabash River Valley; though it is believed that the students voted on 'Sycamores' on a lark, never thinking it would win. During the 1950s and 60s, the sycamore tree itself was used as Indiana State's mascot, with a student dressed in a tree costume. However, as a tree does not lend itself well to an athletic mascot, especially considering Indiana State's in-state rivalries with the Ball State Cardinals and Butler Bulldogs, the university created an Indian mascot named Chief Ouabachi, and his Princess, in 1969. This change paid homage to the fact that ISU was the "State" university of a state named after Indians (before statehood Indiana was primarily inhabited by Indians). However, the university stopped using Chief Ouabachi as a mascot in 1989. For six years, Indiana State did not have a mascot. In 1995, the university welcomed Sycamore Sam to the ISU family. The blue-and-white creature is a favorite among young and old alike.

Sycamores
In 1921 a contest was held to pick a name for the athletic teams at what was then called the Indiana State Normal School. Until that time, the term "Fighting Teachers" was frequently used in press accounts of athletic contests. In January 1922, it was announced that the name Sycamores had won a popular vote of the student body. Indiana State University has used this team name ever since.

Spring Week and Tandem
Spring Week Began in 1970 as part of Indiana State University's official Centennial Celebration. The major highlight of Spring Week is the Tandem Race—thought to be the only co-ed tandem bicycle race in the nation. Today, Spring Week is the largest all-campus activity in the spring. The activities include community service, educational, recreational, entertainment, and competitive involvement for students and organizations.

Tandem teams are composed of campus organizations—providing 10 male and female riders, plus two alternates. Organizations enter individually and are paired by drawings.

The 1970 tandem race featured 25 laps on a course through Fairbanks Park on the bank of the Wabash River. Included in the event were competitive games, special entertainment, and a carnival presented by campus organizations. In 1971, the race took place at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds on the Action Track, a half-mile oval dirt track. It consisted of a 50-mile, 100- lap test of endurance and speed. Activities included midget-races, skydiving, arts and crafts, entertainment, and full-fledged carnival with rides.

The race returned to Fairbanks Park in 1972, then moved to campus in 1973. The race was held in the city streets, which surrounded Sycamore Tower Complex (4th, 5th, Chestnut, and Mulberry Streets). The name “Tandemonia” was coined to replace “Spring Week”. The race moves again in 1974 to Marks Field and consisted of 100 laps or 25 miles on a quarter-mile track. Seventeen teams competed in the race. Corners were close, but no wrecks were caused by the track itself. The 1976 Tandemonia Committee decided to begin the process of “changing over” from Schwinn bikes to newer, lightweight bikes.

Tandemonia 1991 included a Tandem kick-off that replaced the Donaghy Day activities and Tandem Games. Tandemfest, a lip-sync contest was held in Tilson Music Hall, Yell-Like-Hell, the Baseball Rally, and the actual race continued in their traditional pattern.

Due to resurfacing Mark's Field for major track events, the race was moved to the Driver's Education Center at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds in 1993. Nineteen races were held on Mark's Field.

The 25th anniversary was held in 1995 with “Tandemonia” changing back to “Spring Week” and activities more like the original event, including a campus carnival. The 1996 Spring Week Committee emphasized involving more individuals, as well as residence hall students, by providing a roller blade contest and having pairing decorate windows in Residence Halls rather than in sorority suites. The race continued at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds through April 1999. Seven races were held at the Driver's Education facility. In February 2000 the Tandem practice was moved to the new track at the Recreation East Facility located on 9th and Spruce Streets on the ISU campus. Nine teams competed on April 15, 2000, for a place in the history books as the first race on the new track.

The Michael Simmons Activity Center was added to the Recreation East complex in 2005. This building has added a new dimension to the practices and race by providing officials a central place to score the race and fans to have bleachers for better viewing of the competition.

Blue and White
In 1899, it was announced that Yale Blue and White would replace the colors of Salmon Pink and White. The colors are also applied to the Blue and White Parade and the Blue and White Dance held during Homecoming each fall.

Book and torch
The book and torch are official symbols of the university and are featured in its seal. The book symbolizes knowledge and truth gained here and the torch symbolizes the light of inspiration that comes to students in these halls

Book and Torch Ceremony
This traditional ceremony marks the commitment of the senior class to become active alumni of Indiana State. Historically, each senior class was charged with adding to the Parsons-Sandison Living Memorial Fund, a scholarship fund for Indiana State students. This tradition encompasses two ceremonies, the first of which is on Founder's Day (generally in January), at which time the president of the Alumni Board charges the senior class to commit to the university. At commencement, another ceremony is conducted. As part of this ceremony, the senior class answers the challenge of commitment, as they become alumni of the university.

Trike
The Indiana State Tricycle Derby was first run in 1963 as a 10-lap race around the sidewalks of the Quadrangle on children's tricycles. The races featured a men's and women's division (the Powder Puff Derby). The races now feature men's and women's teams racing on specially built tricycles at the new Recreation East complex at Ninth and Sycamore streets. In October 2005, the Michael Simmons Student Activity Center opened at Rec East, featuring commemorative displays chronicling the history and the participants of trike and tandem, containing bleacher seating, an all-purpose room, restrooms, an observation deck, and storage.

Fight song
"March On! (You Fighting Sycamores)", the university's fight song, was authored and arranged by Joseph A. Gramelspacher, an ISU professor of music, as a pep song. It was first performed at a homecoming eve pep rally on October 20, 1939.

Before "March On!", the school's fight song was "Cheer for the Blue and White", composed in 1931 as part of the Indiana State Teachers College song contest.

In addition to The Marching Sycamores (Pride of Indiana) the School of Music provides these other Ensembles available for music students to participate in as part of the well established School of Music: Concert Band, Jazz Combos, Jazz Ensemble, Percussion Ensemble, Steel Drum Band, University Symphony, Wind Orchestra, Wind Symphony, Sycamore Basketball Band, Choral Ensembles, Concert Choir, Masterworks Chorale, Music Theater/Opera, Sycamore Singers, & Women's Chorale.

Alma mater
Charles M. Curry, Professor of English and Literature authored The Alma Mater. It was originally entitled, "Indiana's Normal" and first printed in a June 1912 issue of the Normal Advance. Dr. Curry used the music of Annie Lisle for The Alma Mater.

Athletics
The school's athletic teams are known as the Sycamores. They participate in the Division I Missouri Valley Conference and NCAA FCS Missouri Valley Football Conference.

Athletically, it is known as the alma mater of basketball player Larry Bird; World Champion gymnast Kurt Thomas; and Olympic, World, and Pan-American Champion freestyle wrestler Bruce Baumgartner. Basketball coach John Wooden coached the Sycamores before accepting the head coaching position at UCLA. The men's basketball team won the 1950 NAIB National Champions and were National Runner-Up in 1946 and 1948. They were also the NCAA College Division (Div II) National Runner-Up in 1968 and the Division I National Runner-Up in 1979. The 1950 team comprised the core of the 1951 Pan-American Gold Medal Team. In 1971, Coach Grete Treiber led the ISU Women's gymnastics team to a National Runner-up finish at the AIAW National Championships. Kurt Thomas led the Men's Gymnastics Team to the 1977 NCAA National Championship. Men's tennis player Vedran Vidovic holds the NCAA Division I record for most consecutive singles victories by winning 37 matches in a row from March 18, 2001, to October 28 of the same year.

Facilities
Hulman Center, originally named Hulman Civic-University Center, is a multi-use arena that opened in December 1973. It seats 10,200 people for basketball and is home to the Indiana State University Sycamores men's and women's basketball teams of the Missouri Valley Conference. It has hosted multiple concerts and the Missouri Valley Conference men's basketball tournament title game in 1979, the year legendary Larry Bird helped the undefeated Sycamores reach the championship game of the NCAA tournament. The Hulman Center hosted the 1974 Midwest Region of the NCAA Tournament which featured Creighton, Texas, Oral Roberts, Syracuse, Louisville, and Kansas. It is currently being renovated at a cost of $50 million, scheduled to be completed in late 2020.

The baseball field is located within a mile of the main campus along the Wabash River. Bob Warn Field at Sycamore Stadium is home to the Sycamore Baseball program and played host to the 2014 and 2016 Missouri Valley Conference Baseball Championship. Memorial Stadium, the home field for Indiana State's NCAA Football Championship Subdivision football team of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, and the women's soccer team is located on Wabash Avenue, two miles (3 km) east of the main campus. The Gibson Track and Field Complex is the newest athletic facility at Indiana State and is located along the Wabash River on the west side of campus. It hosted the 2016 Missouri Valley Conference Track and Field Championships. Price Field is the home for the Sycamore Softball team.

Indiana State University has hosted thirteen (2002, 2004–2011, 2013–2014, 2016, 2019) NCAA Division I cross country championships at the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course. The school has also hosted the NCAA Great Lakes Regional seven times (1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2017, 2018 and 2020*); ISU will host the Great Lakes Regional in 2022.

The university also hosted the 1975 NCAA Gymnastics National Championships and hosted the tenth NCAA Wrestling Championships in 1937; the school had yet to establish a wrestling program.

Men

 * Baseball – Bob Warn Field
 * Basketball – Hulman Center
 * Cross country – LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course, Wabash Valley Family Sports Center
 * Football – Memorial Stadium
 * Track and field – Gibson Track and Field

Women

 * Basketball – Hulman Center
 * Cross country – LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course, Wabash Valley Family Sports Center
 * Soccer – Memorial Stadium
 * Track and field – Gibson Track and Field
 * Softball – Eleanor Forsythe St. John Softball Complex
 * Golf – multiple (The Country Club of Terre Haute {private}; Idle Creek {semi-private}, Rea Park {public} and Hulman Links {public} Golf Courses)
 * Volleyball – ISU Arena
 * Swimming

title: Indiana State University


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Mark Latham

Mark William Latham (born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator who is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from December 2003 to January 2005, leading the party to defeat at the 2004 federal election. He left the ALP in 2017 and joined Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 2018, gaining a seat for that party in the New South Wales Legislative Council at the 2019 New South Wales state election and winning re-election in 2023.

Latham was born in Sydney and studied economics at the University of Sydney. He joined the Labor Party at a young age and worked as a research assistant to Gough Whitlam and Bob Carr. He was elected to the Liverpool City Council in 1987 and became mayor in 1991. Latham entered the House of Representatives by winning the seat of Werriwa at the 1994 Werriwa by-election. He was included in Labor's shadow cabinet after the 1996 federal election, but left the frontbench in 1998 following a dispute with the party leader, Kim Beazley. He returned to the shadow cabinet in 2001, when Simon Crean became leader.

Latham became leader of the Labor Party in December 2003, narrowly defeating Beazley in a leadership vote after Crean's resignation. He was the youngest leader of the party since Chris Watson in 1901. At the 2004 federal election, the ALP lost five seats and reduced its share of the two-party-preferred vote; the incumbent Howard government was re-elected to a fourth term. Latham became disillusioned with politics and retired in January 2005. After leaving politics, he published a memoir, The Latham Diaries, in which he attacked his former colleagues and condemned the state of political life in Australia.

After leaving parliament, Latham started a career as a prominent political and social commentator, and became highly critical of the Labor Party and left-wing politics. He would soon gain a reputation for making inflammatory and controversial comments. In December 2016, he began co-hosting Outsiders on Sky News Live, but he was fired from the network in March 2017 after he made insulting comments about a fellow presenter and the teenage daughter of a governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Latham returned to politics and joined the Liberal Democratic Party in May 2017, which led to him receiving a lifetime ban from the Labor Party. In November 2018, Latham left the party and announced that he had joined One Nation as its state leader in New South Wales. He successfully stood for the party in the upper house at the 2019 state election. He resigned in the middle of his eight-year term on 2 March 2023 in order to run for a new eight-year term at the state election later that month.

In August 2023, it was announced that Pauline Hanson had removed Latham from the position of party leader for One Nation (New South Wales). On 22 August 2023, Latham resigned from One Nation to sit as an independent.

Early career
Latham was born on 28 February 1961 in Ashcroft, a suburb of south-western Sydney in New South Wales. He was educated at Hurlstone Public School; the Hurlstone Agricultural High School, where he was dux; and at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics with Honours in 1982. While he was a student, Latham worked at the Green Valley Hotel for 2 years. He also worked as an adviser to Labor politician John Kerin from 1980 to 1982. After completing his degree, Latham worked as a research assistant to the former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam from 1982 to 1987, which included working on the latter's book The Whitlam Government, and then as an adviser to then-Leader of the New South Wales Opposition Bob Carr from 1988 to 1991.

In 1987, he was elected to the Liverpool City Council, in Sydney's south-west, and was mayor from 1991 to 1994. Latham played rugby union with the Liverpool Bulls club and had a stint as its president. He has also been a fan of St George Dragons rugby league club since 1968.

Latham's term as mayor saw radical changes introduced to the council, with large spending on public works, to be paid for by a combination of loans and efficiencies achieved from outsourcing many council services.

In an article in Quarterly Essay, journalist Margaret Simons, who conducted an extensive investigation of the period, concluded that there were real issues in the financial management of the council. These mostly related to the drafting of the outsourcing agreements. Simons also said most of the allegations come from council members who were sacked for incompetence by the state government.

On 1 June 2004, Latham told Parliament that during his time as mayor he had reduced Liverpool's debt service ratio from 17 to 10 percent, which he said was less than half of western Sydney's average. He also said Liverpool had adopted a debt retirement strategy that he claimed would have made it debt free by 2005, but it was not implemented by his successors.

Labor member of Parliament
In January 1994, Latham was elected at a by-election to the House of Representatives for the Sydney seat of Werriwa, which had been Gough Whitlam's seat from 1952 to 1978. He was elected to the Opposition front bench after Labor lost the 1996 election, and became shadow minister for education. After the 1998 election he resigned from the front bench following a policy dispute with the opposition leader, Kim Beazley. The two became political enemies following this incident.

The views expressed in Civilising Global Capital (see below) alienated him from many Labor traditionalists, but his aggressive parliamentary style won him many admirers. He once referred to Prime Minister John Howard as an "arselicker" and to the Liberal Party frontbench as a "conga line of suckholes". He also described U.S. President George W. Bush as "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory".

On politics, Latham commented in 2002: "I'm a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them. I hate their negativity. I hate their narrowness. I hate the way, for instance, John Howard tries to appeal to suburban values when I know that he hasn't got any real answers to the problems and challenges we face. I hate the phoniness of that."

Leader of the Opposition
Latham was a strong supporter of Kim Beazley's successor Simon Crean, defending the leader against his critics within the party. He called Crean's principal frontbench detractors, Stephen Smith, Stephen Conroy and Wayne Swan "the three roosters". When Crean resigned the Labor leadership, Latham contested the ballot for leader against Beazley. On 2 December 2003, Latham won the vote for the leadership by 47 votes to 45. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were early contenders for the leadership, but both withdrew in favour of Beazley and Latham respectively. At age 42, Latham became the youngest leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party since its first leader Chris Watson, who became leader at age 33 in 1901. In his first press conference as leader, Latham championed his belief in a "ladder of opportunity" that would bring prosperity to all Australians.

The Howard government targeted Latham's brash personality and his colourful past. Howard characterised him as "Mr Flip-Flop", referring to a character in a children's book. Peter Costello attempted to damage Latham's economic credentials by referring to the experimental economic ideas that he had put forward as shadow treasurer, such as abolishing negative gearing and replacing the GST with a Progressive Expenditure Tax. Frequent references were made to Latham's temper; he was alleged to have broken a taxi-driver's arm in a scuffle arising from a fare dispute.

On winning the leadership, Latham appointed his predecessor, Simon Crean, as shadow treasurer, while also retaining a number of Kim Beazley's supporters in senior positions. In July 2004 Beazley himself was re-elected to the ALP front bench as Shadow Minister for Defence.

In January 2004, the Labor Party national conference was held in Sydney. During the conference, Latham received very positive media coverage and introduced his plans for early childhood literacy. He introduced an unusual campaign style, choosing to focus on "values" issues, such as reading to children and economic relief for middle-class Australia, which he termed with the political slogan "ease the squeeze".

Latham also put forward plans to reform the education and health systems. In contrast to the intense stagecrafting of Latham's image at the conference, he boosted his profile by means of loosely organised "town hall"-style direct meetings around the country. By March, Labor had taken the lead over the Coalition in the opinion polls, and Latham had a higher personal approval rating than any opposition leader since Bob Hawke in 1983. Commentators began to discuss the serious possibility that Latham could be Prime Minister by the end of the year.

In March, following the Spanish election at which the pro-Bush administration People's Party government was defeated, Latham sparked a new controversy by committing a Labor government to withdrawing Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas. At that time, Australia had about 850 troops in Iraq, mostly involved in patrol work and in training members of the new Iraqi defence forces. Howard accused Latham of a "cut and run" approach and said "it's not the Australian way not to stay the distance".

2004 federal election campaign

Until March 2004, Labor under Latham's leadership held a strong lead in national opinion polls. Latham's commitment to withdraw from Iraq caused a sharp drop in Labor's lead, but following the revelations of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison, Labor's lead increased again, suggesting that support for involvement in Iraq had declined, undermining Howard's position.

In June 2004, Labor's "troops home by Christmas" policy came under fire from U.S. President George W. Bush who, at a White House press conference during Howard's visit to Washington DC, described it as "disastrous". Bush's comments raised controversy in Australia over whether Bush was interfering in Australia's domestic political affairs, whether the election of a Latham government would endanger the U.S. alliance, and whether the comments were made with Howard's prior knowledge.

Shortly afterwards, Latham announced the recruitment of Peter Garrett, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and former lead singer with the rock band Midnight Oil, as a Labor candidate in Kingsford Smith, a safe Sydney electorate being vacated by the retiring former minister Laurie Brereton. Garrett revealed that he had been approached months before by senior ALP figures, including John Faulkner and Kim Beazley, and had taken this long to make up his mind. Most commentators regarded his recruitment as a high-risk tactic, seeing the potential advantage to Labor of Garrett's popularity among young people as being offset by the possibility that his record of radical and anti-American statements in the past would offend moderate voters.

The second coup scored by Latham was the announcement that he would abolish the generous superannuation schemes available to members of parliament; his plan was quickly adopted by the Howard government in the face of a rising wave of public support with the support of his mentor former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the former member for Werriwa.

Other announced policies and initiatives included: the introduction of federal government parenting classes for those parents deemed to be failing to adequately discipline their children; a ban on food and drink advertising during children's television viewing hours; the introduction of a national youth mentoring program; the government distribution of free story books to the families of newborn children; a federal ban on plastic shopping bags; and the introduction of legislation to prohibit vilification on the basis of religious beliefs or sexual orientation, similar to laws adopted in the state of Victoria that some critics said had led to a restriction of free speech. Some of these initiatives prompted Howard to criticise Latham as a "behavioural policeman".

In July 2004, Latham again became the centre of controversy when it was alleged on a commercial television network that he had punched a political rival during his time on Liverpool Council. Latham strongly denied the accusation. On 6 July 2004, he called a press conference and denounced the government for maintaining what he called a "dirt unit," which he said was gathering personal material about him, including details of his first marriage. The government denied that any such unit existed, but some observers speculated that Liberal Party researchers had accumulated more potentially embarrassing material about Latham, which would be used during the election campaign (a threat which never eventuated), in addition to claims that Latham was an inexperienced economic manager.

Between March and August, Latham's position in the opinion polls gradually declined, leading to renewed speculation that Howard would call an early election. During August, Labor claimed a tactical victory over the government on the issue of the Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement and there were allegations in a Senate inquiry that Howard had lied about the "Children Overboard Affair" during the 2001 election campaign. By mid-August, Labor was again ahead in all three national opinion polls.

The election was held on 9 October 2004. Although opinion polls showed the ALP leading the government at various stages of the six-week campaign, the government was re-elected with an increased majority. This was despite Latham being generally credited with a strong performance and a victory in the sole campaign debate. In the days after the election, Latham was criticised for releasing many key policies too late, a case in point being Labor's policy regarding conservation of Tasmanian old growth forests.

Among those critical of Latham were journalists Tom Allard and Mark Metherell, who said "the flurry of releases meant Mr Latham went off message from Labor's core strengths of health and education." Labor's party president, Carmen Lawrence, blamed the unexpected severity of the defeat on an effective Coalition "scare campaign" focused on Latham's limited economic management experience, and the alleged threat of a rise in interest rates under Labor, which was not effectively countered, reportedly in an attempt by Tim Gartrell to conserve funds for later in the campaign (where, in previous years, Labor had been outspent by the Liberals).

Gartrell also apparently failed to anticipate the interest rates scare campaign. The inability of his campaign to counter the Liberal campaign would later be cited by Latham himself, in the Latham Diaries, as a key reason for the election loss. Latham wrote that he had told his wife Janine that "I've tried to carry the whole show on my shoulders: my family, my community, my party. But now I'm stuffed. I have collapsed under the weight of those fucking ads". Michael Costello, a former chief of staff to Kim Beazley, said: "This is a complete train wreck. We now face at least two terms before we can win government again. We face at least three years with John Howard pretty much in control of the Senate."

On the morning of 8 October, the day before the election, a television crew filmed Latham and Howard shaking hands as they crossed paths outside an Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio studio in Sydney. The footage showed Latham appearing to draw Howard towards him and tower over his shorter opponent. The incident received wide media coverage and, while Latham claimed to have been attempting to get revenge for Howard squeezing his wife's hand too hard at a press function, it was variously reported as being "aggressive", "bullying" and "intimidating" on the part of Latham. The Liberal Party campaign director, Brian Loughnane, later said this incident generated more feedback to Liberal headquarters than anything else during the six-week campaign, and that it "brought together all the doubts and hesitations that people had about Mark Latham". Latham disputes the impact of this incident, however, having described it as a "Tory gee-up: we got close to each other, sure, but otherwise it was a regulation man's handshake. It's silly to say it cost us votes – my numbers spiked in the last night of our polling." According to Latham's account of events, Latham came in close to Howard for the handshake to prevent Howard shaking with his arm rather than his wrist.

Latham became the first Labor opposition leader since Frank Tudor in 1917 to fail to make a net gain in seats from the government at his first election. Some commentators, including Kim Beazley, said Latham's leadership had rescued Labor from a much heavier defeat. Beazley said polling a year before the election indicated the ALP would lose "25–30 seats" in the House of Representatives. Instead the party lost a net four seats in the lower house, a swing of 0.21% and there was a 1.1% swing to the ALP in the Senate.

Leadership tensions
Labor's defeat led to media criticisms of Latham's personal style and policy priorities, and also to a crisis in confidence in his leadership within the Labor caucus. Several prominent members of the front-bench, notably John Faulkner, Lindsay Tanner and Bob McMullan, chose not to recontest front-bench positions. McMullan made it clear he was unhappy with Latham's leadership style and gave an interview suggesting there would be a leadership challenge early in 2005. The national secretary of the Australian Workers' Union, Bill Shorten, was also highly critical of Latham.

In December, after Latham was incorrectly reported to have blamed Labor's state premiers for the defeat, an unnamed Labor frontbencher predicted a leadership challenge within the next few months, saying Latham's supporters had lost confidence in him. Latham also had a heated public confrontation with the Labor deputy leader in the Senate, Stephen Conroy, renewing speculation there would be a challenge to Latham's leadership in the new year.

Latham was helped by the fact that there was no obvious successor to the leadership. The most likely candidates, Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and Stephen Smith, accepted senior positions on Latham's frontbench and pledged loyalty to him. The leaders of the Socialist Left faction, and the centre-left under Martin Ferguson and Julia Gillard, also maintained their support for him. There was little support for a return to Beazley, and neither Tanner nor McMullan were seen as viable leadership candidates. In the longer run, however, many commentators doubted Latham would survive until the 2007 election after such a heavy defeat.

The final crisis for Latham's leadership erupted in the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. With both Latham and his deputy leader, Jenny Macklin, on leave, the acting opposition leader, Senator Chris Evans, issued statements in the aftermath of the tsunami. Latham was criticised for not issuing a statement as leader personally, particularly at a time when John Howard expressed national sympathy over the disaster, pledged $1 billion in loans to Indonesia and declared a national day of mourning. Latham rejected the criticism of his non-appearance after the tragedy, saying "none of my verbiage could make any practical difference – bring back the dead, reverse the waves, organise the relief effort". Macklin issued a statement on the disaster on 30 December before also choosing to take leave.

Opinion polls in January showed a sharp decline in Latham's support and a preference for the return of Beazley as Labor leader.

Departure from politics
On 18 January 2005, citing life-threatening illness and family concerns, Latham announced his resignation from the Labor Party leadership and from Parliament. He strongly criticised the media for invading his family's privacy during his illness. Latham had been federal Labor leader for 13 months, the shortest tenure since Billy Hughes was expelled from the party in 1916. Latham was only the second federal Labor leader, after Matthew Charlton in 1928, to leave politics without ever having held ministerial office.

Political journalist Mungo MacCallum wrote: "Latham became leader too early in his career, he lacked the skills needed to deal with the webs of intrigue within his own party, he refused to massage the media and the advisers he did listen to were out of their depth against Howard's praetorian guard. But he had many qualities that were not only desirable and attractive but are in short supply in today's ALP. In other circumstances he could have developed into a formidable leader, even prime minister. As it is, he remains one of the great what-ifs."

Publications
Although Latham wrote Civilising Global Capital while he was an MP, most of his works have been written after his parliamentary career.

Civilising Global Capital
While on the backbench of Parliament in the late 1990s, Latham published Civilising Global Capital: New Thinking for Australian Labor (Allen and Unwin, 1998), in which he argued that Labor needed to abandon many of its traditional policies and embrace the aspirational values (home ownership, higher education) of the upwardly-mobile skilled working class and small business class. His policies as the leader of the Labor Party were largely derived from the stance taken in this book, which ideologically is described as "the third way".

Biography
Latham's biography Loner: Inside a Labor Tragedy, by Bernard Lagan, was launched on 29 June 2005 by Senator John Faulkner, published by Allen & Unwin. The book caused furore within Labor ranks. Most of this was due to material contained within a single email written by Latham in the last page of the book. Of Kim Beazley's return to the leadership, Latham said: "Labor got the leader it truly deserves – it is well suited to a conservative stand-for-nothing type of leader." Latham also criticised state Labor premiers Bob Carr, Peter Beattie and Geoff Gallop, calling them "A-grade arseholes." Union leader Bill Shorten remarked that Latham had displayed "all the attributes of a dog except loyalty."

Of his election loss, Latham wrote: "I had my shot at being prime minister. It didn't work out on several fronts. But life goes on, potentially in a splendid way, spending so much time with my family. After suffering testicular cancer, the greatest gift in my life has been the ability to have children with Janine. I would be a fool to waste it."

The Latham Diaries
Soon after his retirement, Latham announced his decision to publish a selection of diary entries spanning almost a decade. Following a bidding war, it was announced that Melbourne University Press (MUP) would publish the Diaries in late September. MUP later awarded the exclusivity rights for extracts to News Ltd and the exclusivity for the first interview to the ABC television program Enough Rope, which was due to be broadcast at 9.30 pm on Monday 19 September 2005.

Meanwhile, excerpts of the Diaries were published by The Australian from 15 September ahead of their publication in book form on 19 September. The excerpts published include attacks by Latham on the ALP, his successor Kim Beazley, frontbencher Kevin Rudd and former Labor prime ministers Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam.

Due to the publicity the Diaries were now generating, the extensive amount of published extracts, and concerns that Latham had recorded other interviews, in particular with another ABC program, Lateline, Enough Rope pushed to have the interview broadcast four days early on Thursday 15 September at 8.30 pm with a simultaneous broadcast on some ABC radio stations. However, when the time came to broadcast, the ABC announced that the interview would not be shown due to a legal injunction sought by News Limited (owner of The Australian), which had the rights to publish extracts from the Diaries. Reports on the night said any broadcast by the ABC was a breach of confidentiality between News and the book's publisher, MUP, the newspaper publisher having signed to an A$80,000 deal to publish excerpts of the book in the weekend newspapers. However, at 10.30 pm, the ABC aired the Denton interview after the Supreme Court of New South Wales lifted the injunction. Justice Harry Palmer said the publication of large parts of the book in News Limited newspapers largely destroyed the value of the material. Due to the last-minute changes, the edition of ABC's Lateline program scheduled for 10.30 pm featuring another interview with Latham (also subject to the short-lived injunction) was aired the following night.

The Diaries represent a remarkable and unprecedented statement by a former leader of a major political party. In the book, Latham is scathing about Australia's political system: "It takes committed people ... and turns them into one-dimensional robots ... The only good news is that the public is on to them. The electorate has worked out the artificiality of it all. They can see through the spin doctors, the publicity stunts, the polling and the tricks of marginal-seat campaigning. This is why people now talk about politics with a cool anger. They have a clear feeling that the system is far from genuine. That the robots, in fact, are tin men."

A Conga Line of Suckholes
Latham's seventh book, a collection of quotations titled A Conga Line of Suckholes, was released by Melbourne University Publishing in late September 2006.

"No Exit The ALP"
In November 2010, Latham contributed an essay in The Monthly titled "No Exit The ALP". In it, Latham again criticised the ALP, writing that "for all the heightened rhetoric, for the seemingly endless creation of summits, committees and policy review processes, the lasting impression from the Rudd years is one of emptiness". He also remarked that "Without a guiding philosophy of politics, Rudd's prime ministership was an exercise in populism. He avoided tough decisions and mastered the art of media manipulation as a way of extending his honeymoon". Latham concludes that Labor had "lost its way". His suggested solution is that Labor again champions great causes, writing that:

"Having studied the literature and, at one time, been part of these debates, I can identify just three credible ideas that have been advanced for the renewal of the social democratic project. Each seeks to move beyond economic issues, beyond the material realm of politics, to stake out new ground. The first tries to reclaim social capital, the rebuilding of mutualism and community, as a Labor icon. The second positions Labor as an anti-establishment party, breaking down the entrenched centres of power in society. The third champions a crusade on climate change, an uncompromising attempt to roll back the materialism of western society in favour of environmental values."

Latham finishes his essay by writing about the difficulties of each approach.

Other publications
Mark Latham also wrote Reviving Labor's agenda: a program for local reform (Pluto Press / Australian Fabian Society, 1990), What did you learn today?: creating an education revolution (Allen & Unwin, 2001), From the Suburbs: Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods (Pluto Press Australia, 2003), The Political Bubble: Why Australians Don't Trust Politics (Pan Macmillan, 2014), Latham at Large (Melbourne University Press, 2015), and Taking Back Australia: Saving Our Country, Our Culture, Our Civilisation (Wilkinson Publishing, 2018).

He also wrote a weekly column for the Spectator magazine (Australian edition) entitled "Latham's Law".

Melbourne University Lecture
Latham gave his first public lecture since the release of the Diaries, titled "Ten Reasons Why Young Idealistic People Should Forget About Organised Politics", on 27 September 2005, at Melbourne University. During the lecture, he argued that organised politics is ineffective at achieving real social change, due to public apathy, the rise of conservatism and the inward-focused structure of the major parties, and instead encouraged youth to focus on more grassroots, community-based programs. He also claimed politics has a detrimental impact on health, happiness and family life, largely blaming the "arrogant" and "incompetent" media, as well as internal party struggles.

Incident at Hungry Jack's
On Thursday, 19 January 2006, Latham was eating with his two sons at a Hungry Jack's restaurant in Campbelltown, New South Wales when he was photographed by Ross Schultz, a photographer from The Daily Telegraph. Schultz alleged that Latham snatched the camera and smashed it, without destroying the electronic media that contained the photographs. The Telegraph subsequently announced plans for upcoming publication of the photographic images in the following Saturday's edition and that it would be seeking $12,000 from Latham to replace the equipment. The following day, Latham appeared to drive towards a Channel 7 television cameraman at his Sydney home. The photographer was unhurt but Seven's head of news in Sydney, Chris Willis, said the footage clearly showed Latham's car veer toward the cameraman as he stood on the side of the road. In February 2006, Latham was charged with assault, malicious damage and theft in relation to the incident. Latham did not appear in Campbelltown Local Court to face the charges, on 22 March, instead giving a lecture to political science students at the Australian National University. When asked by a student how he could blame everyone else but himself, Latham replied: "I'm sorry I didn't come in here and expose myself as a miserable arsewipe." On 26 April, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Latham again chose not to appear in Campbelltown Local Court in relation to the 19 January incident. The case was adjourned to 24 May. On 6 June, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Latham escaped having a criminal conviction for malicious damage to the camera being used by Schultz recorded against him, but had been placed on a good behaviour bond for two years. After pleading guilty to malicious damage, he had the charges of assault and theft dropped. He was also required to pay $6,763.70 in compensation for the damaged camera.

The Sun Herald reported on 13 August 2006 that the family were moving from their Glen Alpine home to a property at Mount Hunter, near Camden.

2007 federal election
He commented on the 2007 federal election campaign with an article in the Australian Financial Review, in which he said Australia was having a "Seinfeld election, a show about nothing". Latham wrote that, no matter which party won, Australia would have a conservative economic policy and an industrial relations system which was decentralised and productivity-based. He stated that Australian public life had reached the "zenith of policy convergence", and that "Many people in the Labor movement are expecting Labor in power to be far more progressive than its stated election promises. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative".

2010 federal election
In 2010, Latham was a guest reporter for television show 60 Minutes, where he reported on the federal election campaign. It was here that during a report he confronted Julia Gillard. Latham pushed his way through the crowd and confronted Gillard and her partner, Tim Mathieson, saying: "I understand you have made a complaint about me working for Channel 9". Gillard replied "I don't know anything about that, Mark. If you want to work with Channel 9, that's a matter for you", before Latham suggested that Kevin Rudd had been behind the leaks against her during the campaign.

During the campaign, Latham attacked Gillard's stance on population growth as "a fraud", arguing that the Gillard government would have to reduce immigration levels if it was serious about easing population pressures in Australia's capital cities.

He also caused a stir when, on 60 Minutes, he urged voters to issue a protest vote by leaving the ballot paper blank on election day: "They say that voting in Australia is compulsory, but it's not compulsory to fill out the ballot paper. You can put it in the ballot box, totally blank. That's what I'll be doing on Saturday and I urge you to do the same. It's the ultimate protest vote."Following that interview, he continued to attack Gillard as well as journalist Laurie Oakes.

2013 federal election
On 14 August 2013, during the election federal campaign, Latham was interviewed by the 3AW radio station in Melbourne. He caused controversy when asked to comment on Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott's characterisation of Fiona Scott, the Liberal candidate for Lindsay, as having "sex appeal". Latham responded: "It showed very bad judgment, it showed that he's got low standards. I've had a good look at Fiona Scott [...] and I don't think she's got sex appeal at all. [... Abbott] must have had the beer goggles on because she's not that good of a sort, and I'd rather have an aspirant for the prime ministership who's a good judge when it comes to checking out the good sorts."

Controversy at the Australian Financial Review and Triple M
In August 2015, Latham resigned from his regular column after spending eight years with the Australian Financial Review. His resignation was linked to a series of articles critical of Australian of the Year Rosie Batty and also Group Captain Catherine McGregor.

In January 2016, further controversy erupted over Latham's radio podcast on Triple M with comments that he paraphrased from a government report saying "men who have lost their self esteem" turn to domestic violence "as a coping mechanism." Latham referred to Batty (whose son was murdered by his father) as "exploiting her personal tragedy" and "doing more harm than good" by publicising domestic violence against women and children as an epidemic "when the official reports show it at one percent." Batty responded that she hoped "someone like Mark is able to become more informed and (is) not stuck in the, I guess, ignorant position because that type of thinking went out several decades ago...there are still some people unfortunately very influenced and stuck in those (mindsets)."

Triple M is a supporter of White Ribbon Campaign, a charity which is led by men to raise awareness of domestic violence caused by men. Since Latham's podcast was broadcast, there have been widespread calls for White Ribbon to distance itself from Triple M and Latham. The chair of White Ribbon, John Rosewarn, responded that "Mark Latham's views on domestic violence, as aired by Triple M, show his lack of understanding and knowledge of this complex issue, including its prevalence, causes and community response." White Ribbon also tweeted: "Domestic violence is much more than physical violence; it's never a coping mechanism."

2016 US presidential election
During the 2016 United States presidential election, Latham announced his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, stating "Donald is by no means perfect but I much prefer his approach to the lying snakes of machine politics and media manipulation" and praised Trump's pledge to dismantle the Obama administration's deals with Iran.

Commentator
After leaving federal politics, Latham worked as a journalist and political and social commentator, appearing on numerous panel programs including Sunrise on the Seven Network and The Verdict on the Nine Network. In 2016, Latham became co-host of Sky News Live programs Jones + Co and in 2017 co-host of Outsiders.

In a March edition of Outsiders, Latham criticised a lack of diversity among corporate diversity officers and included Sky News colleague Peter van Onselen's wife as an example. Van Onselen and his To The Point co-host Kristina Keneally criticised Latham for the segment. Latham responded by criticising both, including negative statements about Keneally's record as Premier of New South Wales. Keneally threatened to take defamation action and made a formal complaint to Sky News management. In a separate incident, ABC Radio Sydney presenter Wendy Harmer initiated legal action after Latham made numerous statements criticising her.

A third controversy related to Latham questioning the sexuality of a school student during an Outsiders segment criticising a video put out by Sydney Boys High School in support of International Women's Day and suggested he "thought that first guy was gay", referring to a student in the video. Latham was fired from Sky News on 29 March 2017 after the story was published.

Latham later defended himself saying that a lot of journalists who discussed the comments had not seen the show: "That video was put out there to deliberately confuse people, because the young people were using the words of women and the first fellow up was talking about sex with a man - so it became clear later on what the sort of trick was, but they put it up there for public discussion, we had a discussion about it on the show. No offence was meant, none should have been taken. It really is appalling that people who complained about nothing at the time all of a sudden get worked up later on..."

In April 2017, Latham launched a website called Mark Latham's Outsiders and hosted a weekly Facebook Live program. Despite sharing the same name, it is unrelated to the Sky News program Outsiders which has continued without him as host.

In the same month, Latham created a video titled What's Gone Wrong With Australian Multiculturalism: Ethnic Enclaves in Fairfield, where he was subsequently criticised by the leaders of Fairfield for describing the deficiency of English in the area as "disgraceful". In the video, he tried to interview the residents of Fairfield, most of whom refused to speak due to a language barrier. Also in the video, Latham postulated that the ethnic enclave in Fairfield and Cabramatta signaled multiculturalism was failing as the West Asian-descent people in Fairfield did not want to visit Cabramatta, a suburb with a large East Asian population. Assyrian Resource Centre manager Carmen Lazar rebutted Latham, saying many programs in Fairfield aid refugees to learn English, such as Navitas Limited.

In 2019, Latham was a keynote speaker at the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Australia, alongside former prime minister Tony Abbott and British politician Nigel Farage.

Liberal Democrats
In May 2017, Latham announced via his Facebook page that he would be joining the Liberal Democrats, a libertarian party. The Labor Party responded by placing a life ban on Latham from ever re-joining the party, after a motion was passed by the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party. According to Latham, he had terminated his ALP membership in March 2017 after being refused permission to address a party gathering.

Latham also announced that he was open to running as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in future elections. However, he was blocked by the party executive from running as a candidate and, as a result, resigned his party membership in September 2018.

One Nation
In November 2018, Latham announced that he had joined One Nation as the party's state leader in New South Wales, and would stand for the Legislative Council at the 2019 state election. In response, Luke Foley, the state ALP leader, ruled out recommending preferences to One Nation candidates. Latham ran on a platform which opposed immigration, congestion, overdevelopment and renewable power, and proposed DNA tests for Aboriginal welfare recipients and banning the burqa in Government buildings.

Latham was successful in his bid to return to parliament, winning an eight-year term in the Legislative Council alongside Rod Roberts. Latham's maiden speech to the state parliament focused on criticising "leftist elites", maintaining the values of Western civilisation, the importance of education and the right to freedom of speech, as exemplified in the recent Israel Folau controversy.

Since 2020, Latham has promoted a bill titled "Parental Rights" which seeks to prohibit teachers from discussing "the ideology of gender fluidity to children in schools".

In 2021, Latham moved a motion to pull Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu from the New South Wales school curriculum. One Nation, Fred Nile and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party voted for it, while the Liberal Party, the National Party, Labor and the Greens voted down the motion.

In October 2022, Latham announced his plan to quit the Legislative Council just before the 2023 New South Wales state election and to run again on the top of the One Nation ticket. The plan was designed to increase the numbers of One Nation in the Legislative Council from two to four after the election. He resigned from the Legislative Council on 2 March 2023 and was re-elected 23 days later. His seat was filled by Tania Mihailuk.

Following an intervention from the federal branch of One Nation, Latham was removed from the position of state leader of One Nation in New South Wales. Hanson cited the party's worse than expected 14% drop in vote at the New South Wales state election in March. No member has replaced Latham as leader of the NSW One Nation branch. Latham denounced this decision, declaring that Hanson should "buy a mirror" as her own vote share had decreased at the previous federal election, and that she had stacked the NSW state executive with interstate residents. Latham's colleagues split over the issue; Roberts supported his position by denouncing several members of the new executive as unqualified, while Mihaluk remained silent and was seen as being supportive of Hanson's decision. On 22 August 2023, Latham and Roberts resigned from One Nation to sit as independents.

Immigration
Latham supports a travel ban on certain Islamic countries, saying, "If you know that there's a country that's producing a lot of troublemakers, would-be terrorists, radical jihadists coming to Australia, what sort of sane nation would say, 'Bring 'em in!' If you know there's a nation that's no good for us, then turn off the tap."

Burqa ban
Latham supports banning the burqa in government buildings, banks and airports.

Same-sex-marriage
Latham has previously claimed he is a supporter of same-sex marriage. However, in 2017 during the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey he endorsed the 'no' vote, saying that a 'yes' vote "will open a can of worms".

Homophobic tweet controversy
Disgusting? How does that compare with sticking your dick up a bloke's arse and covering it with shit? 30 March 2023 Following the 2023 New South Wales state election, Latham published a tweet in response to fellow politician Alex Greenwich, who is openly gay, after he called Latham "disgusting". He wrote: "Disgusting? How does that compare with sticking your dick up a bloke's arse and covering it with shit?". The comments were deemed to be homophobic by Greenwich and other politicians, and received significant backlash, even from within his own party as Pauline Hanson criticised Latham and called for him to apologise. Latham later deleted the tweet, but refused to apologise. Greenwich strongly criticised the tweet (which he says brought him to tears), calling Latham "unfit for office".

Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, who had interviewed Latham several times on Sky News Australia, said that Latham had a "self-destruct button" and questioned his ability to function as a political leader after "earning the contempt of so many". Newly elected New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called Latham's tweet "vile and shameful", and labelled him a "bigot". Environment Minister Penny Sharpe also criticised Latham's comments. Federal Nationals leader David Littleproud called on Pauline Hanson to take action against Latham for his comments.

On 28 April 2023, Greenwich threatened legal action against Latham for "homosexual vilification". Latham again refused to apologise, causing Opposition Leader Mark Speakman to condemn his comments. In May 2023, Greenwich announced he would be launching defamation action against Latham over the tweet. He also made a formal police complaint about Latham using a carriage service to harass and offend, and a homosexual vilification complaint to the anti-discrimination board.

Australia Day
In 2018, Latham launched a Save Australia Day campaign with help from Aboriginal politician Jacinta Price in response to the #ChangeTheDate social media campaign which called for the date of Australia Day to be moved or for the holiday to be abolished entirely. Latham argued "Changing the date will not change the circumstances of any disadvantaged Indigenous people" and "if the Left succeeds in moving or abolishing Australia Day, there is nothing about Australia that will be safe into the future".

Personal life
Latham began dating his first wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, in 1987, and they married in 1991. They separated in 1997 and divorced in 1999. Latham married his second wife, Janine Lacy, in 2000; they have two sons together. Latham announced his separation from Lacy in 2022.

Latham has described himself as a humanist. In a 2004 interview he said "I'm agnostic. I think there's a force, a spiritual world beyond the material. But I'm not in a position to define it, let alone put it into a certain form of religious practice."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mark Latham


text:
John P. Kennedy

John Pendleton Kennedy (October 25, 1795 – August 18, 1870) was an American novelist, lawyer and Whig politician who served as United States Secretary of the Navy from July 26, 1852, to March 4, 1853, during the administration of President Millard Fillmore, and as a U.S. Representative from Maryland's 4th congressional district, during which he encouraged the United States government's study, adoption and implementation of the telegraph. A lawyer who became a lobbyist for and director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Kennedy also served several terms in the Maryland General Assembly, and became its Speaker in 1847.

Kennedy later helped lead the effort to end slavery in Maryland, which, as a non-Confederate state, was not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation and required a state law to free slaves within its borders and to outlaw the furtherance of the practice.

Kennedy also advocated religious tolerance, and furthered studies of Maryland history. He helped preserve or found Historic St. Mary's City (site of the colonial founding of Maryland and the birthplace of religious freedom in America), St. Mary's College of Maryland (then St. Mary's Female seminary), the Peabody Library (now a part of Johns Hopkins University) and the Peabody Conservatory of Music (also now a part of Johns Hopkins).

Early life and education
John Pendleton Kennedy was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 25, 1795, the son of an Irish immigrant and merchant, John Kennedy. His mother, the former Nancy Pendleton, was descended from the First Families of Virginia family. Poor investments resulted in his father declaring bankruptcy in 1809. John Pendleton Kennedy attended private schools while growing up and was relatively well-educated for the time. He graduated from Baltimore College in 1812. His brother Anthony Kennedy would become a U.S. Senator.

Kennedy's college studies were interrupted by the War of 1812. He joined the army and in 1814, marched with the United Company of the 5th Baltimore Light Dragoons, known as the "Baltimore 5th," a unit that included rich merchants, lawyers, and other professionals. Kennedy wrote humorous amounts of his military escapades, such as when he lost his boots and marched onward in dancing pumps. The war was, however, serious, and Kennedy participated in the disastrous Battle of Bladensburg as the British threatened the new national capitol, Washington, D.C. Secretary of State James Monroe ordered the Baltimore 5th to move back from the left of the forward line to an exposed position a quarter-mile away. After the British forces crossed a bridge, the 5th moved forward. The fighting was intense: nearly every British officer among the advancing troops was hit, but then the British fired Congreve rockets. At first, the 5th stood firm, but when the two regiments to the right ran away, the 5th also broke. Kennedy threw away his musket and carried a wounded fellow-soldier (James W. McCulloh) to safety. Kennedy later fought in the Battle of North Point, which saved Baltimore from a burning similar to that of the capitol. Another wartime contact who proved crucial in Kennedy's later political and business career was George Peabody, who later helped finance the B&O Railroad and founded the House of Morgan, as well as the Peabody Institute.

Kennedy spent his summers in Martinsburg, Virginia, where he read law under the tutelage of his relative Judge Edmund Pendleton (descendant of the patriot Edmund Pendleton, who sat on the Virginia Court of Appeals). Kennedy would later often allude to genteel life on Southern plantations based on his youthful summers in Martinsburg. Later, Kennedy inherited some money from a rich Philadelphia uncle, and in 1829 married Elizabeth Gray, whose father Edward Gray was a wealthy mill-owner with a country house on the Patapsco River below Ellicott's Mills, and whose monetary generosity would allow Kennedy to effectively withdraw from his law practice for a decade to write.

Literary life
Although admitted to the bar in 1816, he was much more interested in literature and politics than law. He associated with the focal point of Baltimore's literary community, the Delphian Club. Kennedy's first literary attempt was a fortnightly periodical called the Red Book, published anonymously with his roommate Peter Hoffman Cruse from 1819 to 1820. Kennedy published Swallow Barn, or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion in 1832, which would become his best-known work. Horse-Shoe Robinson was published in 1835 to win a permanent place of respect in the history of American fiction.

Kennedy's friends and personal associates included George Henry Calvert, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Simms, and William Makepeace Thackeray. Kennedy's journal entries dated September 1858 state that Thackeray asked him for assistance with a chapter in The Virginians; Kennedy then assisted him by contributing scenic written depictions to that chapter.

While sitting round a back parlor table at the home of noted Baltimore literarist, civic leader and friend John H. B. Latrobe at 11 West Mulberry Street, across from the old Baltimore Cathedral in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore neighborhood in October 1833, imbibing some spirits and genial conversation with another friend James H. Miller, they together judged the draft of "MS. Found in a Bottle" from a then-unknown aspiring writer Edgar Allan Poe to be worthy of publishing in the Baltimore Sunday Visitor because of its dark and macabre atmosphere. Also in 1835, he helped later introduce Poe to Thomas Willis White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.

While abroad, Kennedy became a friend of William Makepeace Thackeray and wrote or outlined the fourth chapter of the second volume of The Virginians, a fact which accounts for the great accuracy of its scenic descriptions. Of his works, Horse-Shoe Robinson is the best and ranks high in antebellum fiction. Washington Irving read an advance copy of it and reported he was "so tickled with some parts of it" that he read it aloud to his friends. Kennedy sometimes wrote under the pen name 'Mark Littleton', especially in his political satires.

Lawyer and politician
Kennedy enjoyed politics more than law (although the Union Bank was a prime client), and left the Democratic Party when he realized that under President Andrew Jackson it came to oppose internal improvements. He thus became an active Whig like his father-in-law and favored Baltimore's commercial interests. He was appointed Secretary of the Legation in Chile on January 27, 1823, but did not proceed to his post, instead resigning on June 23 of the same year. He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1820 and chaired its committee on internal improvements, championing the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal so vigorously (despite its failure to pay dividends), that he failed to win re-election after his 1823 vote for state support.

In 1838, Kennedy succeeded Isaac McKim in the U.S. House of Representatives, but was defeated in his bid for reelection in November of that year. Meanwhile, in 1835, Kennedy was among the 10 Baltimoreans who attended a railroad meeting in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, where he delivered a very well-received address urging completion of the B&O Railroad to the Ohio River valley (rather than to Pennsylvania canals, which fed Philadelphia rather than Baltimore). Kennedy was also on the 25-man committee that lobbied the Maryland legislature on the B&O's behalf and ultimately secured passage of the "Eight Million Dollar Bill" in 1836, which led to his becoming a B&O board member the following year (and remained such for many years). When the B&O chose a route westward through Virginia rather than the mountains near Hagerstown, Maryland in 1838, Kennedy was in the B&O's delegation to lobby Virginia's legislature (together with B&O President Louis McLane and well-connected Maryland delegate John Spear Nicholas, son of Judge Philip Norborne Nicholas, a leader of the Richmond Junto) that secured passage of a law authorizing a $1,058,000 (~$ in ) subscription (40% of the estimated cost for building the B&O through the state). However, the B&O's shareholders would reject the necessary Wheeling subscription because of its onerous terms, and Kennedy would again take up his pen in the B&O's defense against criticism by Maryland Governor William Grason.

Kennedy won re-election to Congress in 1840 and 1842; but, because of his strong opposition to the annexation of Texas, he was defeated in 1844. His influence in Congress was largely responsible for the appropriation of $30,000 to test Samuel Morse's telegraph. In 1847, Kennedy became speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, and used his influence to help the B&O, although by the late 1840s it was caught in a three-way controversy with the states of Pennsylvania and Virginia as to whether the B&O's terminus should be Wheeling, Parkersburg or Pittsburgh. After an acrimonious shareholders meeting on August 25, 1847, the B&O affirmed Wheeling as its terminus, and finally completed track to the city in 1853.

Meanwhile, President Millard Fillmore appointed Kennedy as Secretary of the Navy in July 1852. During Kennedy's tenure in office, the Navy organized four important naval expeditions including that which sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry to Japan and Lieutenant William Lewis Herndon and Lieutenant Lardner Gibbon to explore the Amazon.

Kennedy was proposed as a vice-presidential running mate to Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln first sought the Presidency of the United States, although Kennedy was ultimately not selected. Kennedy became a forceful supporter of the Union during the Civil War, and he supported the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. Later, since the proclamation did not free Maryland slaves because the state was not in rebellion, he also used his influence to push for legislation in Maryland that ultimately ended slavery there in 1864.

In 1853, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.

Position on religious tolerance
Kennedy called for erecting a monument to the founding of the state of Maryland and to the birth of religious freedom in its original colonial settlement in St. Mary's City, Maryland. Three local citizens then expanded on his idea and sought to start a school that would become a "Living Monument" to religious freedom. The school was founded as such a monument in 1840 by order of the state legislature. Its original name was St. Mary's Seminary, but it would later be known as St. Mary's College of Maryland.

"All the world outside of these portals was intolerant, proscriptive, vengeful against the children of a dissenting faith. Here only in Maryland, throughout all this wide world of Christendom, was there an altar erected and truly dedicated to the freedom of Christian worship. Let those who first reared it enjoy the renown to which it has entitled them."

"John Pendleton Kennedy, On memorializing the birth of religious freedom in St. Mary's City Maryland"

Earlier, when he was in the Maryland state legislature, Kennedy was instrumental in repealing a law that discriminated against Jewish people in court and trial procedures in Maryland. Jewish people were a tiny population in the state at the time and Kennedy was not Jewish, so there was no political or personal advantage to his position. His opposition to slavery in Maryland can be traced back for decades but the depth of that opposition went through an evolution from mild and more economically based in the beginning, to being stronger and more morally based by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy, an Episcopalian, also helped to lead private charitable efforts to aid Irish Catholic immigrants, who were experiencing a great deal of discrimination in the state at the time. However, he did also advocate setting limits on overall foreign national immigration into Maryland beginning in the 1850s, stating that he felt that the sheer number of new immigrants might overwhelm the economy.

Opposition to slavery

Kennedy's opposition to slavery was first publicly expressed in his writings, and then later in his life as a politician, through his speeches and political initiatives. His opposition to slavery in Maryland can be traced back through many decades of his life, but the depth of that opposition went through an evolution from milder and more understated in the beginning, to being stronger, more vocal and more morally based by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and then the following state-level effort to end slavery in Maryland, as the state was not included in the Emancipation Proclamation because it was not in the Confederacy.

Kennedy once wrote that witnessing a speech by Frederick Douglass had opened his eyes more fully to the "curse" of slavery, as Kennedy called it by 1863.

Kennedy's 1830s novel Swallow Barn is critical of slavery but also idealizes plantation life. However, the original manuscript shows that some of Kennedy's initial descriptions of plantation life were much more critical of slavery, but that he crossed those out of the manuscript before the book went to the printer, possibly because he was afraid of being too openly critical of slavery while living in Maryland, a slave state.

Historians are not in consensus as to whether his earlier softer opposition to slavery was a way of preventing violent attacks against himself, since he lived in a border state where slavery was still practiced and still widely supported. Outright abolitionism at that time would have been an unpopular and potentially dangerous position in pro-slavery Maryland. Other historians maintain that his views on slavery simply evolved from weaker opposition to stronger opposition.

The novel, although more muted in its criticism of slavery by the time of its publication and also expressing some idyllic stereotypes about plantation life, leads to the prediction that slavery would bring the Southern states to ruin. Swallow Barn was published in 1832, 29 years before the start of the Civil War and long before anyone else was known to predict that the Southern and Northern states were headed for armed conflict.

Civil War
Just prior to the Civil War, Kennedy wrote that abolishing slavery immediately was not worth full-scale civil war and that slavery should instead be ended in stages to avoid war. He noted that civil wars were historically the most bloody and devastating kinds of warfare and suggested a negotiated, phased approach to ending slavery to prevent war between the sections.

But after the war broke out, he returned to a position of outright opposition to slavery and began to call for "immediate emancipation" of slaves. His demands for the end of slavery grew stronger as the war progressed. By the height of the Civil War, when Kennedy's opposition to slavery had become much stronger, he signed his name to a key political pamphlet in Maryland opposing slavery and calling for its immediate end.

There is consensus among historians that Kennedy was critical of slavery to some degree for decades, strongly opposed to slavery by the height of the Civil War, and strongly opposed the Confederacy. In Maryland state politics and charity leadership, Kennedy was also known to help other minority groups, notably Jews and Irish Catholics. When the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in Maryland, Kennedy played a key leadership role in campaigning for the end of slavery in the state.

Because Maryland was not in the Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the state and slavery continued there. Since there was no active insurrection in Maryland, President Lincoln did not feel constitutionally authorized to extend the Emancipation Proclamation to Maryland. Only the state itself could end slavery at this point, and this was not a certain outcome as Maryland was a slave state with strong Confederate sympathies. John Pendleton Kennedy and other antislavery leaders, therefore, organized a political gathering. On December 16, 1863, a special meeting of the Central Committee of the Union Party of Maryland was called on the issue of slavery in the state (the Union Party was a powerful political party in the state at the time).

At the meeting, Thomas Swann, a state politician, put forward a motion calling for the party to work for "Immediate emancipation (of all slaves) in Maryland". John Pendleton Kennedy spoke next and seconded the motion. Since Kennedy was the former speaker of the Maryland General Assembly, as well as a respected author, his support carried enormous weight in the party. A vote was taken and the motion passed. However the people of Maryland as a whole were by then divided on the issue and so twelve months of campaigning and lobbying on the matter of slavery continued throughout the state. During this effort, Kennedy signed his name to a party pamphlet calling for "immediate emancipation" of all slaves that was widely circulated. On November 1, 1864, after a year-long debate, a state referendum was put forth on the slavery question. The citizens of Maryland voted to abolish slavery, though only by a 1,000 vote margin, as the Southern part of the state remained heavily dependent on the slave economy.

Work with cultural and educational institutions
Kennedy, in his close association with George Peabody, was instrumental in the establishment of the Peabody Institute, which later evolved and split into the Peabody Library and the Peabody Conservatory of Music, which are now both part of Johns Hopkins University. He also served on the first board of trustees for the institute and did the first writing that outlined its mission. He also recorded minutes for the board's earliest meetings. Kennedy is known to have worked for years to help lay the groundwork for these institutions.

Kennedy also played an eseential but unintended role in the establishment of St. Mary's Female Seminary which is now known as St. Mary's College of Maryland, the state's public honors college. Kennedy's used his reputation as a respected Maryland politician and author, to call for designating St. Mary's City as the state's "Living Monument to religious freedom", memorializing its location on the site of Maryland's first colony, which was also considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America as well. A few years later three local citizens refined his idea into calling for a school in St. Mary's City that would be the "Living monument". The school continues to have this designation to this day.

Kennedy was the primary initial impetus and was also pivotal in gaining early state recognition of its responsibility for protecting, studying and memorializing St. Mary's City, Maryland (the then-abandoned site of Maryland's first colony and capitol, as well as being the birthplace of religious freedom in America), as a key state historic area, placing historical research and preservation mandates under the original auspices of the new state-sponsored St. Mary's Female Seminary, located on the same site. This planted the early seeds of what would eventually become Historic St. Mary's City, a state-run archeological research and historic interpretation area that exists today on the site of Maryland's original colonial settlement.

Historic St. Mary's City also co-runs (jointly with St. Mary's College of Maryland) the now internationally recognized Historical Archaeology Field School, a descendant of Kennedy's idea that a school should be involved in researching and preserving the remains of colonial St. Mary's City.

During his term as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Kennedy made the request for the establishment of the United States Naval Academy Band in Annapolis in 1852. The band continues to be active to this day.

Federal study and acceptance of the telegraph
While serving in the United States Congress, John Pendleton Kennedy was the primary and decisive force in Congress in securing $30,000 (an enormous sum at the time) for testing Samuel Morse's telegraph communications system. This was the first electronic means of long-distance communication in human history. The government tests corroborated Morse's invention and led to federal adoption of the technology and the subsequent establishment of the American telegraph communications system, which revolutionized communications and the economic development of the United States. Federal acceptance of the telegraph had a major impact on Abraham Lincoln's management of the Civil War as well.

Commissioner of the 1867 Paris Exposition
Kennedy was a commissioner of the 1867 Paris Exposition, an international science, technology and arts fair that was held in Paris, France, in 1867. The fair had participation from 42 nations and had over 50,000 exhibits. It was the second World's Fair.

Retirement from public office
Kennedy retired from elected and appointed offices in March 1853 when President Fillmore left office, but he remained very active in both Federal and state of Maryland politics, supporting Fillmore in 1856, when Fillmore won Maryland's electoral votes and Kennedy's brother Anthony won a U.S. Senate seat. His name was mentioned as one of the vice-presidential prospects on the Republican ticket alongside Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (which would have meant that Abraham Lincoln would be on the same ticket as a man named "John Kennedy"). Instead, Kennedy was the Maryland chairman of the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated John Bell and Edward Everett for the Presidency. Kennedy played an instrumental leadership role in the Union Party's successful effort to end slavery in Maryland in 1864. This had to be done at the state level because the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the state. At the end of the American Civil War – during which he forcefully supported the Union – he advocated amnesty for former rebels.

During this time, he had a summer home overlooking the south branch of the Patapsco River upstream near Orange Grove-Avalon-Ilchester off the main western line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad now in the area of Patapsco Valley State Park, which was devastated by a disastrous flood in 1868.

Kennedy died in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 18, 1870, and is buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Legacy
In his will, Kennedy wrote the following:

"It is my wish that the manuscript volumes containing my journals, my note or common-place books, and the several volumes of my own letters in press copy, as also all my other letters, such as may possess any interest or value (which I desire to be bound in volumes) that are now in loose sheets, shall be returned to my executors, who are requested to have the same packed away in a strong walnut box, closed and locked, and then delivered to the Peabody Institute, to be preserved by them unopened until the year 1900, when the same shall become the property of the Institute, to be kept among its books and records."

Today there are two large special collections of his papers, manuscripts and correspondence; one remains at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and the other is at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. There are also a number of libraries from Virginia to Boston that have smaller collections of his correspondence (both private and official letters).

The naval ships USS John P. Kennedy and USS Kennedy (DD-306) were named for him.

Books and essays

 * The Red Book (1818–19, two volumes).
 * Swallow Barn: Or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832) [under the pen-name Mark Littleton].
 * Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency in South Carolina, in 1780 (1835).
 * Rob of the Bowl: A Legend of St. Inigoe's (1838) [under the pen-name Mark Littleton].
 * Annals of Quodlibet [under the pen-name Solomon Secondthoughts] (1840).
 * Defence of the Whigs [under the pen-name A Member of the Twenty-seventh Congress] (1844).
 * Memoirs of the Life of William Wirt (1849, two volumes).
 * The Great Drama: An Appeal to Maryland, Baltimore, reprinted from the Washington National Intelligencer of May 9, 1861.
 * The Border States: Their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country (1861).
 * Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors [anthology,  co-edited by John P. Kennedy  and Alexander Bliss  ] (1864)
 * Mr. Paul Ambrose's Letters on the Rebellion [under the pen-name Paul Ambrose] (1865).
 * Collected Works of John Pendleton Kennedy (1870–72, ten volumes).
 * At Home and Abroad: A Series of Essays: With a Journal in Europe in 1867–68 (1872, essays).

title: John P. Kennedy