Monday, January 01, 2007

UI President Search & Other 2007 Blog Plans

When I started the "UI President Search" series of (now 18) blog entries November 18, 2006, and devoted this blog exclusively to that subject, I truly believed it would be a brief focus, and that surely the Regents we'd have a president designated by December 1. Now that the saga continues, and shows no promise of being resolved before the summer of 2007, and given all the other subjects that have been put on hold, I need to re-think the role of this blog.

UI President Search. (1) The Regents in general, and their search committee in particular, will continue as a subject. I'll continue to collect, and provide links to, the media coverage and basic documents, as well as comments about them. (2) It just won't be the only subject, as it has been for the last month and a half. (3) My anticipation is that events, and media reports, cannot keep up the every-day-a-new-revelation pace of the past six weeks. (But I was wrong about that before, and may be again.) (4) To ease readers' access to the continuing search story I may continue to provide, within every blog entry regardless of subject, the standard paragraph of links (reproduced immediately below) that I've been including in the "UI President Search" entries:

[Note: If you're new to this blog, and interested in the whole UI President Search story, these blog entries begin with Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search I," November 18, 2006. For any given entry, links to the prior 10 will be found in the left-most column. Going directly to FromDC2Iowa.Blogspot.com will take you to the latest. Each contains links to the full text of virtually all known media stories and commentary, including mine, since the last blog entry. Together they represent what The Chronicle of Higher Education has called "one of the most comprehensive analyses of the controversy." The last time there was an entry containing the summary of prior entries' commentary (with the heading "This Blog's Focus on Regents' Presidential Search") is Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search XIII -- Last Week," December 11, 2006. My early proposed solution to the conflict is provided in Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search VII: The Answer," November 26, 2006. And the fullest collection of basic documents related to the search is contained in Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search - Dec. 21-25," December 21, 2006 (and updated thereafter), at the bottom of that blog entry under "References".]

Other subjects. The "Blog Index" reveals the range of subjects that have seasoned this blog since last June. And there's no telling what 2007 will bring.

But I do owe readers an update on my efforts to bring sanity to the UICCU credit union's flirtation with "Optiva."

And although there's no news of the Pella rain forest -- and won't be genuine news until David Oman finds $200 million lying around somewhere -- the fact that Governor Vilsack now proclaims the project "nuts," and U.S. House Rules Committee Chair-elect Louise Slaughter is talking about taking back Senator Grassley's $50 million earmark, there's a bit to comment about on that one. (See Weekend Edition Sunday, "New House Rules Panel Chair Promises Change," National Public Radio, Dec. 31, 2006, with link to audio.)

Meanwhile, controversies involving economic development, corporate welfare, and public funding of "attractions" generally, and the prospect of Iowans being able to gamble themselves into prosperity in particular, continue to catch my eye, along with K-12 and higher education issues.
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Nicholas Johnson's Main Web Site www.nicholasjohnson.org
Nicholas Johnson's Iowa Rain Forest ("Earthpark") Web Site
Nicholas Johnson's Blog, FromDC2Iowa
Nicholas Johnson's Blog Index
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would like to make what I hope you will consider to be constructive suggestions.

1. that you ask anonymous posters to number themselves (or use a unique name) so we can keep their comments straight. By the way I wonder if some of these persons really need to be anonymous.
2. that you have a link to an updated complete list of links and you only include new links in the current post. This should reduce the length of a post by a considerable amount. Your posts get longer and longer as you add links and as a consequence it takes a long time for your blog to load.
3. Gov. elect Culver will have to appoint at least four new regents. I suspect that he may have a difficult time finding qualified persons who are willing to serve in the present poisonous atmosphere. A lot of people read your blog and I think you need to devote some attention to this matter.