Kalpen Suresh Modi, a 31-year-old native of Montclair, NJ, will become the associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.
Modi has noted that his interest in politics comes from his grandparents, who marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. Modi received his B.A. in sociology from UCLA, has served as a guest instructor at the University of Pennsylvania's Asian American Studies Department, and campaigned vigorously for Barack Obama across college campuses in 2008.
The Office of Public Liaison is headed by Valerie Jarrett, and the Office is tasked with reaching out to constituency groups across America and serves as the "front door" to the White House. Modi's initial focus will be on outreach to the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, as well as to groups involved in the arts.
Boring. Why am I frontpaging this? Because Kalpen Modi is best known to us all under his stage name, Kal Penn, and he's setting aside his acting career for the unglamorous, and much less financially lucrative world of public service. There will not be a third Harold and Kumar movie, not any time soon. As he explained last night (warning: link contains spoilers about his House character):
Will you actually be working in the White House?
PENN: This particular office is in the executive building. The White House has two buildings: the actual White House and an old Navy building called the Old Executive Office.
Are you there as long as Obama's in office?
PENN: A lot of that stuff is up in the air. This is a relatively recent development.
Safe to say you're taking a huge pay cut?
PENN: Oh, yeah. There's not a lot of financial reward in these jobs. But, obviously, the opportunity to serve in a capacity like this is an incredible honor.
How long has this been in the works?
PENN: I've been thinking about [moving into politics] for a while. I love what I do as an actor. I couldn't love it more. But probably from the time I was a kid, I really enjoyed that balance between the arts and public service. I went to a performing arts high school, but I still took a bunch of those dorky political science classes. It's probably because of the value system my grandparents instilled in me. They marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement, and that was always in the back of my head. So the past couple of years I thought about it a little more. And in '06 I started this international studies program at Stanford, where they actually let you do most of the course work online. So it was something I could do while I was acting. And I thought this might be the right time to go off and do something.
From the White Castle to (next door to the) White House. Not bad.