I recently went looking for a nugget and found a gold mine. Let me explain. I visited the website of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum a few weeks ago to track down information on a former Illinois lawmaker from its oral history collection. I emerged several hours later...
Several years ago, the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute was invited to join a dozen universities in the United States to promote bipartisan collaboration and productive discourse at the State and local levels. The Institute developed a plan to strengthen how congressional town hall meetings are conducted in Illinois. Our...
Several years ago, staff members of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute were preparing for our Renewing Illinois Summit for university and college students, and we wanted to provide them with suggested reading material on Illinois. I checked my shelves at the institute and jotted down the titles of various...
Is the notion of “One Illinois” a reasonable hope, a noble aspiration, or an impossible dream? The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute is inviting Illinois college students to help us examine this theme and other important questions in the coming Spring at the institute’s second Renewing Illinois Summit. The institute...
By John T. Shaw Those in government rarely have time to extract themselves from the relentless rush of daily drama and urgent deadlines to think about the future. Former North Carolina governor Terry Sanford once observed there is no one in the governor’s office looking out the window, pondering the...
As the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, I don’t pay an undue amount of attention to the weather. However, Monday, January 28, 2019, was different. I woke up to a heavy snowstorm barreling across Illinois and was concerned because the Institute...
