Latest news with #civicleadership
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Funeral to be for Lori Healey, former Daley chief of staff and Obama Center executive
Longtime civic leader and urban planner Lori Healey, who died earlier this month from pancreatic cancer, will be laid to rest on Tuesday. A celebration of life will be held Tuesday morning at Chicago Women's Park and Gardens in the South Loop near McCormick Place. Healey began her career as a policy aide to Kansas Gov. John Carlin in 1983, according to the City Club of Chicago, where Healey was a board member. In Chicago, Healey served as commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development under Mayor Richard M. Daley, and was appointed his chief of staff in 2007. In 2009, Healey was appointed president of Chicago 2016, where she co-led Chicago's ultimately unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Healey also coordinated the organizational and planning activities for the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago as executive director of the NATO Host Committee, the City Club of Chicago noted. Healey later served as chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, also known as McPier, which owns Navy Pier and McCormick Place. In 2019, Healey became the president of the Chicago regional business unit at Clayco, a Chicago-based development and design firm. In December 2020, Healey joined the Obama Foundation as senior vice president and executive project officer for the Obama Presidential Center. She was at the helm of the project to develop the 19.3-acre Obama Presidential Center campus in Jackson Park, which is still under construction. Healey's family called her "a remarkable woman — a deeply devoted mother and grandmother who found her greatest joy in time spent with her adoring family."
Wall Street Journal
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Texas and Western Civilization
A rare bright spot in American higher education these days is the trend of universities starting new schools for civic inquiry and debate. The latest cheer goes to the University of Texas, which is making a major commitment to teaching the ideas of Western civilization and the American constitutional order. On Thursday the UT Board of Regents announced a $100 million investment in the School of Civic Leadership, the biggest sum so far by a public university in a program focused on civics education and constitutional principles. The money will help renovate a building on campus to become a permanent location for the civics school and the Civitas Institute, an in-house think tank. The school will enroll 100 freshmen in a Civic Honors major this fall.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
University of Texas System invests $100M in UT civics school: 'A crowning achievement'
The University of Texas System is investing $100 million in the School of Civic Leadership at its flagship campus in Austin. The "transformative" boost is meant to elevate the school into a leading hub for fostering future civic leaders and impactful change agents, board Chairman Kevin Eltife announced at a news conference Thursday alongside top Texas political leaders. The money will be used to renovate UT's Biological Laboratories building as the school's new home and create a "statement" building just north of campus, said Justin Dyer, the school's dean. It's currently housed in the Littlefield building, but the move will make the school more central and allow room for it to grow. Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick praised the investment during the news conference. Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, a Republican megadonor who has reportedly funded vacations for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and donated to the new University of Austin, was also pictured at the event, though he did not speak. "We've been hungry as leaders of this state to see the transformation and education that the University of Texas is delivering to this school," Abbott said. "It is absolutely essential that we as a state, the University of Texas as a university, that we be able to do the reformation ... in regards to classic education, to classic civics. To say the least, there's been a dramatic departure from those principles and precepts over the past two decades." The Texas Legislature in 2021 initially established the Civitas Institute, a think tank housed at UT and funded by the state, to foster intellectual diversity and explore foundational questions. In 2023, UT System regents voted to establish a school in which to house the Civitas Institute. Similar schools have been established across the country to restore trust among conservatives, who say are often outnumbered on university campuses and report distrust in higher education. Abbott and Patrick have taken particular interest in public universities over the last few sessions, particularly in rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and stripping power from faculty members, who the top government leaders have derided as too "woke" or liberal leaning. An attempt to end faculty tenure failed last session, however, Senate Bill 37 — a Patrick priority bill being considered in the current session — aims to significantly restructure governance in higher education by reducing faculty authority over governance, core curriculum and hiring. The school will offer its first undergraduate degree this fall, focused on civic honors. The Civic Leadership School offers a master's degree in civics and two minors — one in civics and one in philosophy, politics and economics. The school has 14 faculty members. Multiple incoming freshman who are pursuing an undergraduate degree at the Civic Leadership School gathered at Thursday's event to celebrate the news. Shane-David Willet said he hopes to pursue a degree in law and politics, and the announcement was "awesome." "Being a part of the first class, that can be a really special thing," Willet said. "You have the time to make real inroads. ... I'm really excited." Elia Davis, another incoming freshman, switched her major to civic honors after being admitted to the school, believing it was the best way to prepare her for a career in law and politics. She picked the program because of "how freethinking it is and how you can think about both conservative and liberal ideas without focusing on one or the other," Davis said. "It's a lot of free thinking, free speech, kind of going back to the old American ideals." Patrick touted the investment as another vehicle in which Texas is leading in higher education and soon in civic education. "This is a crowning achievement, and this will lead universities around the country to follow," Patrick said. "We've been given a magnificent opportunity from our founders and today is the day in Texas we begin to claim our inheritance once again." The institute has been criticized as being a conservative project because Republican lawmakers and donors helped organize it, the Texas Tribune reported in 2021, but the school has billed itself "pre-partisan" and although it's attractive to conservative students, it says it fosters discussion around all ideas. UT leaders say the school was founded on free speech and free inquiry, and explores education that is "needed to preserve constitutional democracy." The investment comes at a time when universities may face a funding shortfall due to institutional enhancement funds being cut from the state's budget proposal — depriving UT of an estimated $38 million — as well as sweeping federal funding cuts for research. Republican Sens. Brandon Creighton of Conroe and Paul Bettencourt of Houston said they would withhold extra funding for higher education institutions until universities assert their compliance with Senate Bill 17, a 2023 law that outlawed DEI initiatives and programs in colleges and universities. On Thursday morning, Eltife told regents and university leaders that this is a "trying time" due to "serious possible federal budget cuts to research and grants." "We are chosen to lead by example, to focus on our true mission, which is doing what's in the best interest of students and patients," he said. In an interview after the announcement, Eltife told the American-Statesman that this investment has been in the works for three or four years, and it reflects how the board's belief and confidence in this school and its potential. "We're putting our money where our mouth is," he said. "... The board is proud to make this investment, and we're going to do everything we need to to make sure this school is adequately funded and they can hire the right faculty, because our students are going to love this school." When asked about institutional enhancement funds, he said he has been in conversation with Patrick, who is supportive of higher education, and that he is confident higher education will be "happy" at the end of the legislative session. The boost is also one of the first major announcements since Davis was appointed to the top post at UT in February. "There is really other no time you can recall where this group of people has gathered before this event," Davis said, adding that it affects the "historical" impact the investment will have on students. A timeline for construction has not yet been announced, but Dyer, the school's dean, said leaders have been busy crafting classes, recruiting faculty members and preparing to welcome incoming freshman to the interdisciplinary program. "Crucially, this investment will position the University of Texas at Austin as the national leader in a growing system to restore classical and civic education in the heart of higher education," he said. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: University of Texas System announces $100M investment in civics school
Irish Times
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Michael McDowell ‘a man with a fearsome devotion' to Ireland, says ex-president Mary McAleese
Former minister for justice and attorney general Michael McDowell is a man with a 'fearsome devotion' to Ireland, former president of Ireland Mary McAleese has said. Launching The Definite Article, a collection of McDowell's newspaper columns, Mrs McAleese said the Senator is equally dedicated to Ireland's Constitution , 'to its democracy, its principles, its people, its European character, as a sovereign State, and within the EU of course'. Her words will attract attention, no doubt, given the speculation that McDowell may consider putting his hat into the ring to succeed Michael D Higgins in the presidential election later this year. Praising his columns for offering 'a particular vocation of civic leadership', Mrs McAleese said Mr McDowell 'can take an intellectual crowbar to just about anything and turn up the soil and see what's under it'. READ MORE 'That is just so important. Civic intellectual leadership. The kind of provocative leadership that wants you to argue back,' said Mrs McAleese, who served two terms in Áras an Uachtaráin, ending in 2011. She said McDowell's grandfather, Eoin MacNeill, and so many others had suffered deeply during their efforts to free Ireland from 'our miserable colonial imperial past' and 'to give us what we have right now'. Today, she said, the State is 'one of the most stable, sane democracies in the world'. In his political and legal life, McDowell, she said, 'never flinched' from immersing himself in every political debate, where he was 'not afraid', did his research and headed into the argument with his 'version of the truth'. 'We need people with that deep sense of civic leadership ... Because out there, there are forces ranged against it,' she said. [ Ministers need to stop pointing out obstacles to delivery - and start tackling them Opens in new window ] McDowell said he had not intended to publish a collected edition of his columns, but his publisher, Red Stripe Press's Michael Brennan, proposed it when he did not meet the deadline for a book on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which is still 'in gestation'. In a March 2016 Irish Times column, McDowell warned of the danger that Donald Trump would pose if he secured the US presidency. 'I don't claim to be a prophet, it was simply based on the fact that I had taken the trouble to watch on YouTube his campaign speeches.' He told the launch, held in the Royal Irish Academy, that while watching the videos he had absorbed 'the psychology of it, all the paranoia and all the potential for evil'. He 'likened' the experience of watching Trump's campaign footage to the warnings offered by former Berlin-based Irish diplomat Daniel Binchy, who warned of the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1932. Binchy had captured Hitler 'spot on', while others underplayed the threat he posed, said McDowell. 'He dealt with the hatred, he dealt with the war memory, he dealt with the divisiveness and evil of the man.'
