Burka, who served as a staff member of the College's WDCR radio station, said his role on the talk show allowed him to become politically active and share his views with a large portion of the student body. During his on-air segments, Burka wrote and read original political commentaries on issues ranging from domestic policy to the Vietnam War.
While Burka was a student at the College, the United States was immersed in passing former President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation, and was becoming increasingly involved in Vietnam, Burka said.
Burka's discussion focused primarily on the broadcast he gave on April 22, 1966, one of the last aired segments he produced. The broadcast, which focused on the contention between the two major political parties and their inability to collaborate, is particularly relevant to today's world, he said.
"The Republican party cannot continue to say no they have to offer some sort of viable alternative," Burka said in his initial broadcast, referring to Republicans' hard-line stance on the Vietnam War and anti-poverty initiatives of the 1960s.
Burka asked students whether the current Republican Party can continue to reject many of the proposals put forth by Democratic representatives like President Barack Obama's health care legislation without offering viable alternatives.
Although a second theme in his 1966 broadcast was that Republicans could not continue to win elections by simply opposing Democrats' ideas, Burka said his theory has proven untrue given Republican politicians' recent electoral success.
"I cannot tell you the number of Republican politicians I heard in regard to health care legislation say, Repeal and replace,'" he said. "Well, replace with what?"
Burka implored approximately eight students in attendance to consider how leaders should recommend alternative suggestions before automatically rejecting current proposals.
Burka also drew a parallel between Vietnam and current international conflicts, prompting students to discuss whether senior government officials are obliged to criticize the current administration's war-time policies.
Burka briefly discussed the danger associated with politicians creating policy without adequate public and private dialogue concerning the details and consequences of implementation, citing recent United States government interventions in Iraq and Libya.
He also used the example of former President Richard Nixon, who ran for president on a platform of providing war-time relief but failed to produce a successful solution to the conflict. Nixon's failure demonstrates that information concerning governmental policy decisions should be available to the public, he said.
During his broadcasts, the most important political issues facing the nation were the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and reapportionment, which Burka said involved establishing a "one man, one vote" policy for state legislatures.
"I basically had the ability on any given night to sit down and type anything I wanted about anything I wanted," Burka said. "These things were never reviewed by anybody for content or purpose."
Burka's commentaries functioned as editorials even though they did not always "represent the views of the station or of the College," he said.
Burka graduated from the London School of Economics in 1967 and Harvard Law School in 1970, he said. He practiced anti-trust law in New York and Washington, D.C., before working for the Federal Trade Commission.
The presentation took place in Morrison Commons in the Rockefeller Center.