Posted by ERIC WILSON - The Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) held its board meeting in Little Rock today. A member of the CPB board of directors and Founding Dean of the Clinton School, Senator David Pryor, hosted the lunch at Choctaw. Speakers included Arkansas Gardener, P. Allen Smith (featured above); Executive Director of the Clinton Foundation, Stephanie Streett; President of Heifer International, Jo Luck; and Dean Skip Rutherford.
CPB is a private nonprofit corporation accountable to the public for investing its funds in programs and services which are educational, innovative, locally relevant, and reflective of America’s common values and cultural diversity. To find out more, click here.
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT - The new Clinton School short film, launched yesterday on our main Web site, is now up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Check it out:
This video was created and produced by O’Malley Creadon Productions.
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT - Former Louisiana Congressman turned pharmaceutical industry lobbyist Billy Tauzin said America needs health insurance coverage for everyone in a speech today at the Clinton School. Tauzin, a cancer survivor, took the post as head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in January of 2005. The Associated Press was on hand for the speech. Click here for the article. Below is an excerpt:
Billy Tauzin, now president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said changing the emphasis of health care from a “sick care” system to one focused on prevention would help lower costs and encourage healthier living. Tauzin, a cancer survivor, urged those listening during a speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School for Public Service to support efforts to see everyone receive some sort of health-care coverage.
“We’ve got to work on the health disparities,” Tauzin said. “It’s not conscionable to me, (nor) should it be to you, that we live in a country that preaches equality but then some people in this country never to get grow up to see their grandkids because they’re black, because they’re Hispanic, because they live in a poor section.”
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT – Clinton School grad Dustin Freeman is leading the call to 40 Hours of Famine, a symbolic fast to raise money and awareness for the global hunger crisis caused by skyrocketing food prices. Freeman is organizing both religious and secular groups to complete the fast. Below are the details. For more information on getting yourself, your church or your organization involved in 40 Hours of Famine, contact Freeman at dustinfreeman@msn.com.
40 Hours of Famine
The Situation: Global food prices have skyrocketed in the past months, and the world’s poorest have been hardest hit. The result is a “silent tsunami” — the first wide-spread famine in more than 30 years; an emergency that has received only minor public attention.
The plan: To increase awareness of this crisis and raise assistance through a collective 40 hour fast.
40 hours is a safe, and spiritually symbolic, period that will allow participants to experience real hunger in solidarity with the hundreds of millions currently unable to afford basic foodstuffs.
Religious and secular groups around the Central Arkansas area will begin their fast on Friday, May 30th at 8:00 p.m. and conclude on the following Sunday at noon. Any Children interested in participating are encouraged to set a 24-hour goal, from Saturday to Sunday at noon. Anyone unable to fast during these hours, or unable to complete the 40 hour goal, is welcomed to participate when and for as long as they are able.
Participants are invited to raise relief as they fast by obtaining pledges for each hour that they fast. Friends, family and coworkers can pledge to donate a fixed dollar amount for each hour fasted. The reccommended donation is $2.50, representing the cost of a day’s meals in the developing world. Forty hours of fasting at this level of support would lead to a $100 total donation.
All donations will benefit hunger relief in Haiti, which is one of the nations hardest hit by the food crisis. Any money collected should be turned in to St. Andrew’s Anglican Church of Little Rock by June 15th for distribution. Write “Famine” on the memo line. St. Andrew’s will forward the funds to our partner church in Haiti for use and distribution.
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT - As is mentioned in the post below, the Little Rock film festival events at the Clinton School this weekend were a big hit for the second year in a row. The Clinton School showed “Lioness,” a documentary following five women soldiers on the front lines of the Iraq War, and “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater,” the story of the late Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona who ran for president in 1964 against Lyndon Johnson. On hand for panel discussions following the films were Shannon Morgan of Mena, Ark., who is one of the soldiers featured in “Lioness,” and CeCe Goldwater who is featured in the film about her grandfather.
Clinton School student James Mitchell; Shannon Morgan; “Lioness” directors Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers; film festival organizer Brent Renaud; and Clinton School student Russ Swearingen.
*About half of our students leave this week for their summer international projects with others leaving over the next couple of weeks. This summer our students will be performing public service projects on the world’s six inhabited continents including a few who will be working on international projects in Arkansas, New York and Washington D.C.
*This past week I joined graduate school representatives from the University of Chicago, Duke (Sanford Institute), Harvard (Kennedy School and Law), University of Michigan (Ford School and Law), University of Minnesota (Humphrey Institute), Princeton (Wilson School), Stanford (MBA and Law), and Yale–among others–at the Truman Scholar Graduate Fair on the campus of William Jewell College near Kansas City. Each of us had the opportunity to greet, meet and recruit potential students from the 65 new Truman Scholars. It was a very rewarding experience, and it was particularly rewarding to hear comments like “your speaker series is the best in the country;” “I really like your emphasis on public service field work;” “your Web site is very good;” and “FRANK is the most creative school magazine I’ve seen.” Thanks to our staff for these and many other accomplishments.
*Speaking at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law graduation Saturday, I noted the growing interest in our recently established joint JD/MPS degree. If things go as expected, next year Idonia Trotter of Pine Bluff, Ark. will be the first to receive this joint degree. Idonia sets such a positive example for others here at the Clinton School, and there isn’t a better person to be “the first.”
*While on the subject of joint degrees, Clinton School student Chanley Painter, who just completed her first year at the Bowen Law School and earned very high marks there, will be among the contenders for Miss Arkansas this summer. We certainly wish her well.
*Congrats to Brent and Craig Renaud, Owen Brainard, Jack Lofton, (who will be attending the Clinton School in 2009) Jamie Moses and many others for the second and highly successful Little Rock Film Festival. The Clinton School is one of the sponsors and we will continue to do so. New in our school collection is a DVD of the documentary “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater,” which was featured at the school as part of this year’s festival. It was produced by his granddaughter, CeCe Goldwater who spoke following the showing. The big (and to my knowledge yet unreported) festival news this year was Governor Mike Beebe’s strong commitment to make Arkansas more filmmaking friendly. The Governor made that announcement at the fundraising gala at the Clinton Presidential Center.
*Another festival note: From a personal perspective, our nephew, Will Churchill of Nashville Tenn., wrote and performed the music for the film “War Eagle.” In addition to being a great guy, Will is a real talent, and I predict War Eagle will be the first of many productions for him.
*Had the opportunity to discuss the 2008 presidential election at the Associated Press Managing Editors awards banquet this weekend. Clinton School student James Mitchell of Cleveland, MS., who blogged the Iowa caucuses and the Clinton-Obama Texas debate for us, joined me. James is among the students featured in our new Clinton School film trailer which will soon be on our website and other venues.
*Though we take a break from our fast paced public program/speaker series during the summer months while many of our students are abroad, we still have events from time to time. Coming in June: The second annual Arkansas Crossword Puzzle championship competition and in July, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift. Orientation for our new class begins in mid-August.
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT - SYNC Weekly, the local tabloid newspaper geared toward young readers, did its cover story this week on Clinton School student Marquita Little. Little is traveling to Johannesburg, South Africa, this summer to complete her International Public Service Project with Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy. She is a Little Rock native who graduated from McClellan High School and Hendrix College in Conway. Below is a snipet from the article. Click here for the full story.
In less than a month, Little Rock native Marquita Little will find herself in the small South African village of Henley-on-Klip. But the 24-year-old is not headed to South Africa for a vacation. Instead Little will spend June and July interning at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.
Little is one of 30 University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service students spending their summer on one of six continents as part of the school’s International Public Service Projects. Student Erin Jones was the first, departing at the beginning of May for Calcutta, India. Other students will spend the summer in locations as familiar as New York City and Washington, D.C., and as far-flung as Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and Kathmandu, Nepal.
A handful of students will serve with the South African Education and Environment Project in Cape Town, South Africa, but Little will be the only Clinton School student at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, about 20 miles south of Johannesburg.
“They weave leadership opportunities into the extracurricular activities,” Little said. “I’ll be working to help kids start clubs and organizations for leadership opportunities, and help with their student government.”
Posted by BEN BEAUMONT - The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas has an account this morning of the visit of Texas State Rep Mark Strama to the Clinton School yesterday. Strama, the former program director for MTV’s Rock the Vote, said Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama could be a factor in local races this year because of his support among young voters. From the article:
By engaging the younger generation, the Illinois senator has gotten younger voters excited about politics, and they are likely to stay involved in the process, said Mark Strama, now a Democratic state representative in Texas.“I wouldn’t be surprised if the folks who’d gotten newly engaged through the presidential campaign become activists up and down the ballot and throughout their communities,” Strama said in an interview with the Arkansas News Bureau after giving a speech at the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service.
At 35 percent, voter turnout was slightly higher than normal in Arkansas’ Feb. 5 presidential primary, which was moved from mid-May this year to increase the state’s influence in the presidential nominating process.
That level of turnout possibly could carry over to the May 20 primary for state and local offices because voting is habit forming, said Strama, also founder of the first online voter registration company.
Posted by DEAN SKIP RUTHERFORD - I’ll be speaking Saturday afternoon at the 2008 commencement of the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law. Together the Bowen School and the Clinton School now offer the nation’s first joint JD/MPS degree. In 2009, Idonia Trotter is projected to be the first student to receive the joint degree. As part of my graduation comments, I’ll continue to lift up two of my major concerns: student loan debt and the need for scholarships.
Saturday evening I’ll be at the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors Conference discussing the 2008 elections. Having taught college courses on the 2002 and 2004 elections, I’m looking forward to reviewing what is happening this year. The question and answer session following should be lively.
