Gingrich Planning to Suspend Teaching for ‘Couple of Years’

WALESKA, Ga. —  House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Saturday that he will temporarily give up teaching the weekly college history course that is currently the focus of a congressional ethics inquiry.

Speaking to reporters at Reinhardt College in this small northern Georgia town where the 10-week course now takes place, Gingrich said his wife has urged him to take time off for his own good.

“It’s a fairly big job and of course my wife has instructed me that, given the weight of the last campaign and the weight of teaching these courses three years in a row, that it wouldn’t be bad if we took a few weeks off and actually just enjoyed life a little bit,” he said.

“Between being Speaker and maybe taking a little bit of personal time off, I’m going to postpone teaching for a couple of years.”

The course, which Gingrich teaches for two hours every Saturday, is taped and distributed nationwide by a Washington-based conservative think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

Earlier this year, he stirred controversy when in a lecture he said women are unsuitable for combat.

But problems spawned by the course, called Renewing American Civilization, also have run deeper.

Gingrich once taught the course at nearby Kennesaw State College until officials shut it down after learning that course material had been organized by GOPAC, his public interest group.

Former Rep. Ben Jones, a Democrat defeated by Gingrich in the last election, later filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee charging that the course is part of an attempt by conservative Republicans to recruit members.

In a new charge filed Feb. 23, three Democrats said Gingrich accepted free air time from a Colorado cable firm, Jones Intercable Inc., to air 20 hours of his course.

Gingrich responded by accusing the Democrats of launching “a deliberate, systematic smear campaign,” saying he was sick and hurt by the accusations.