Rick Rolf, crisis management strategist, political consultant, writer and educator, made national news in 2008 when he was listed as one of the “Ten Most Dangerous Professors in America” (number six!) by Family Security Matters, an arm of the influential right-wing “Center for Security Policy.”

Rolf and his students mounted a full-scale counter-offensive against “fear brokers” who “challenge the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t see the world precisely as they do.” Hoisting a huge banner reading “Danger: Thinking Zone” at a large political rally in Portland, Oregon, Rolf’s push-back against the blacklisting of his course, “Truth, Lies, Politics and Policy,” which focuses on objectively dissecting the reality of public policy and political decisions, received wide media coverage, as currently seen on YouTube. Eight out of ten television viewers among nearly 400 polled rejected the “dangerous” label.

Rolf is currently a Fellow and adjunct professor at Portland State University’s Hatfield School of Government, Oregon’s largest university. For more than a decade, Rolf served as senior foreign policy adviser, chief campaign strategist and spokesman for legendary anti-war US Senator Mark O. Hatfield, the last true “liberal” Republican. He was also a member of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s “Insider” group during his quest for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President. He is widely credited with conceiving and executing one of the most daring and consequential final- hour US Senate campaign "turnarounds" of the political history of the 1990's.

In 1992, Rolf was a “progressive Republican” candidate for U.S. Congress, making headlines with his call for a national ban on automatic weapons and a halt to “the arms race in the streets.” He purchased an assault weapon without a background check in a quiet suburb and held a press conference two blocks away in an elementary school playground to protest the ease with which such weapons could be obtained. As a western Republican with such staunch convictions, he became a primary target of the NRA.

Rolf’s career in policy and politics began in the late 70’s, with an unpaid internship in the office of U.S. Senator Hatfield. Within weeks, he joined a small cadre of congressional staffers dedicated to bringing down Uganda’s “Butcher of Kampala”, General Idi Amin. Rolf fought for passage of the first (and to date, the last) unilateral American boycott of a government engaged in genocide. With Senator Hatfield leading the charge, the historic "coffee boycott" passed against great odds and stiff opposition from the Carter White House, bringing Amin’s murderous reign of terror to an end.

Later, as Director of Policy and Communications for Hatfield, who was then Chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Rolf went on to play a key role in most of the epic political battles of the post-Vietnam cold-war era, including the filibuster of draft registration, opposition to the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, opposition to production of the MX missile and the fight to prevent production of deadly chemical and biological weapons (for which he was the target of a politically motivated burglary).

Rolf also served on the Board of the Nuclear Freeze Foundation formed by Senators Ted Kennedy and Mark Hatfield, to advise them on arms control policy and legislative strategy, and was a senior adviser to the bi-partisan Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus. Rolf has been dispatched numerous times to execute official and unofficial diplomatic initiatives with high-ranking government and opposition leaders in countries around the world.

As President of Rolf Communications Inc., Rolf has provided counsel to the US Secretary of Energy and some of the nation’s most prominent global corporations and organizations on government and communications strategies, as well as on marketing, positioning, and crisis management challenges.

Rolf is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, with a Master of Public Administration degree. He also holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University where he concentrated on foreign policy. In addition, Rolf earned Harvard’s NISM degree for senior managers in national and international security and completed Stanford University’s Mass Communications program.

Rolf is currently at work on his second screenplay, a political drama “inspired by true events” and a “front row seat” into the inner workings of the “the world’s most exclusive club,” the U.S. Senate. A non-fiction memoir is also in progress, based on Rolf’s extraordinary life experiences as a young man in the corridors of Congress, where he acquired power and influence wildly disproportionate to his age and experience, but certainly not disproportionate to his unflinching desire to make the world a better place.

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