University of Illinois Springfield professor Jason Pierceson recently published an encyclopedia detailing LGBTQ politics. It includes profiles on candidates, officials and activists; a timeline of events; government documents; speeches; and court cases.
Pierceson, a political scientist, is the author or co-author of several books, including “Same-Sex Marriage in the Americas: Policy Innovation for Same-Sex Relationships,” “Courts, Liberalism and Rights: Gay Law and Politics in the United States and Canada,” “Same-Sex Marriage in the United States: The Road to the Supreme Court” and “Sexual Minorities in Politics: An Introduction.
This story and interview aired on NPR on January 23, 2020.
Listen to the story online.
Showing posts with label NPR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NPR. Show all posts
Friday, January 24, 2020
Monday, September 24, 2018
Civil Rights Leader Urges Students: Keep Fighting, With Love
Earlier this month, Diane Nash told a full auditorium of University of Illinois Springfield students that she and fellow civil rights activists, “Loved you before we met you.”
She said efforts to make the U.S. a more equitable place had been done, and are still being done, “For generations yet unborn.”
And she urged others to join the cause, or risk sliding into what she sees as an increasingly authoritarian state.
Nash, a native of Southside Chicago, was a key strategist and leader of the student faction of civil rights efforts during the sixties and beyond. She co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which aimed to create a participatory democracy and helped initiate efforts that led to the march from Selma to Montgomery, and ultimately the Voting Rights Act, signed into law in 1965.
Nash is a lesser-known civil rights leader in comparison with her male peers, though as time marches on, her contributions are becoming more widely heralded. In the 2014 film Selma, she is portrayed by actress Tessa Thompson.
Nash is one to cut right to the heart of the matter. “No one can give you what you want unless you know what it is,” she told students.
As a young person, she asked Nashville’s mayor, on the steps of City Hall, if he believed it was wrong to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin. He said he did believe it was wrong, and Nash said that led to a positive shift that ultimately helped lead to the desegregation she and others fought for.
Nash favors a term she coined in place of “nonviolence.” She calls “agapic energy” a force based on the love of all humankind. It’s a force that can be used to “wage war without weapons of violence,” with energy produced from love versus hate, she said.
According to her philosophy, individuals are never the enemy. Unjust political and economic systems are the enemy, racism is the enemy - but you can love an individual regardless of their beliefs and actions while confronting the systems they represent.
This story appeared on NPR Illinois on September 21, 2018.
Read the entire article online.
She said efforts to make the U.S. a more equitable place had been done, and are still being done, “For generations yet unborn.”
And she urged others to join the cause, or risk sliding into what she sees as an increasingly authoritarian state.
Nash, a native of Southside Chicago, was a key strategist and leader of the student faction of civil rights efforts during the sixties and beyond. She co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which aimed to create a participatory democracy and helped initiate efforts that led to the march from Selma to Montgomery, and ultimately the Voting Rights Act, signed into law in 1965.
Nash is a lesser-known civil rights leader in comparison with her male peers, though as time marches on, her contributions are becoming more widely heralded. In the 2014 film Selma, she is portrayed by actress Tessa Thompson.
Nash is one to cut right to the heart of the matter. “No one can give you what you want unless you know what it is,” she told students.
As a young person, she asked Nashville’s mayor, on the steps of City Hall, if he believed it was wrong to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin. He said he did believe it was wrong, and Nash said that led to a positive shift that ultimately helped lead to the desegregation she and others fought for.
Nash favors a term she coined in place of “nonviolence.” She calls “agapic energy” a force based on the love of all humankind. It’s a force that can be used to “wage war without weapons of violence,” with energy produced from love versus hate, she said.
According to her philosophy, individuals are never the enemy. Unjust political and economic systems are the enemy, racism is the enemy - but you can love an individual regardless of their beliefs and actions while confronting the systems they represent.
This story appeared on NPR Illinois on September 21, 2018.
Read the entire article online.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Democratic candidates for governor debate Wednesday at UIS
The six Democratic candidates for Illinois governor will meet in Springfield Wednesday night for a debate that will be broadcast live on the Internet and radio.
The debate featuring state Sen. Daniel Biss, Bob Daiber, Tio Hardiman, Chris Kennedy, Dr. Robert Marshall and J.B. Pritzker is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the University of Illinois Springfield.
The event is sponsored by The State Journal-Register, News/Talk 94.7 and 970 WMAY, and UIS.
Moderators will be the SJ-R’s Bernard Schoenburg, WMAY’s Jim Leach and NPR Illinois’ Daisy Contreras.
The debate can be heard on WMAY radio or watched on www.sj-r.com or www.wmay.com.
The newspaper, radio station and UIS extended invitations to the two Republican candidates for governor — incumbent Bruce Rauner and state Rep. Jeanne Ives — to debate at UIS prior to the March 20 primary election. Ives accepted the invitation, but Rauner declined, so no debate will be held.
This story appeared in The State Journal-Register on February 20, 2018.
Read the entire article online.
The debate featuring state Sen. Daniel Biss, Bob Daiber, Tio Hardiman, Chris Kennedy, Dr. Robert Marshall and J.B. Pritzker is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at the University of Illinois Springfield.
The event is sponsored by The State Journal-Register, News/Talk 94.7 and 970 WMAY, and UIS.
Moderators will be the SJ-R’s Bernard Schoenburg, WMAY’s Jim Leach and NPR Illinois’ Daisy Contreras.
The debate can be heard on WMAY radio or watched on www.sj-r.com or www.wmay.com.
The newspaper, radio station and UIS extended invitations to the two Republican candidates for governor — incumbent Bruce Rauner and state Rep. Jeanne Ives — to debate at UIS prior to the March 20 primary election. Ives accepted the invitation, but Rauner declined, so no debate will be held.
This story appeared in The State Journal-Register on February 20, 2018.
Read the entire article online.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
A "MAP" of how higher ed and students are lost in Illinois' political battle
College campuses (and the politics behind them) are taking center stage in
Springfield's festering stalemate.
Gridlock has kept money from going to higher education since July. Then, in a matter of hours on Thursday, Democratic lawmakers approved a plan that would pump $720 million dollars into the system. Republicans are calling it a "cruel hoax" that's giving students false hope, even though they, too, say they want to help higher ed. It's a scenario that demonstrates the partisan tensions, and politics, at play.
Legislators on the House higher education committee recently had the chance to meet someone.
"Good afternoon, thank you for having me. My name's Jamie Anderson, I'm a senior at the University of Illinois Springfield. I'm from Stillman Valley, Illinois which is a small town ten minutes outside of Rockford, Illinois."
Anderson says everyone in her life had told her, she'd never make it that far.
"I was a ward of the state. I was a foster child for 11 years. And I just didn't have a family to afford for me to come to college," she testified Wednesday.
She says the Monetary Award Program made it possible.
"I would not be here today if it wasn't for the MAP grant. I would not be the student leader I have become today if it was not for the MAP grant," Anderson, 22, told representatives.
This story was featured on NPR on January 29, 2016.
Listen to the story online
Gridlock has kept money from going to higher education since July. Then, in a matter of hours on Thursday, Democratic lawmakers approved a plan that would pump $720 million dollars into the system. Republicans are calling it a "cruel hoax" that's giving students false hope, even though they, too, say they want to help higher ed. It's a scenario that demonstrates the partisan tensions, and politics, at play.
Legislators on the House higher education committee recently had the chance to meet someone.
"Good afternoon, thank you for having me. My name's Jamie Anderson, I'm a senior at the University of Illinois Springfield. I'm from Stillman Valley, Illinois which is a small town ten minutes outside of Rockford, Illinois."
Anderson says everyone in her life had told her, she'd never make it that far.
"I was a ward of the state. I was a foster child for 11 years. And I just didn't have a family to afford for me to come to college," she testified Wednesday.
She says the Monetary Award Program made it possible.
"I would not be here today if it wasn't for the MAP grant. I would not be the student leader I have become today if it was not for the MAP grant," Anderson, 22, told representatives.
This story was featured on NPR on January 29, 2016.
Listen to the story online
Friday, March 20, 2015
UI officials: Tuition off table for now, but plenty of cuts are possible
A tuition increase is off the table this year but just about everything else is on it at the University of Illinois if big budget cuts are enacted, top UI officials told lawmakers Thursday.
Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed budget calls for a 31.5 percent, or $209 million, reduction at the UI for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
In separate appearances before House and Senate appropriations committees, UI officials outlined possible areas for cuts: personnel, student employment, extension services, public broadcasting and more deferred maintenance.
But Republican members of both the Senate and the House prodded university officials to seek efficiencies and to embrace reforms, including changes in workers compensation and procurement policies.
At times, lawmakers seemed intent on getting UI President Robert Easter and Illinois State President Larry Dietz (who preceded him in both hearings) to endorse their partisan goals.
It likely was the final appearance before an appropriations committee for Easter, who officially steps down as president in May. "As I walked away, I thought, 'I won't have to do this again,'" he said with a smile minutes after wrapping up the Senate session. "I think the members are truly trying to help us in a very difficult situation. I didn't sense that it was an adversarial conversation at all. It was a conversation where they are trying to deal with some incredibly difficult issues. I don't envy them."
Although Easter has appointed a "leadership group" to prepare for cuts, he said it's too early to say what the university's response will be once the budget reductions — which are considered inevitable at some level — are enacted.
"But the programs that a land-grand university traditionally has managed and are a service to the public have to be paid by public resources."
In citing cuts to public services — one of the traditional missions of the university — Easter mentioned extension services that are offered in all 102 Illinois counties, and public broadcasting.
"We provide a myriad of services to the state," he told the House committee. "We operate a public broadcasting station here in Springfield for the benefit of the public. I'm not sure a year from now we can do that. We operate a public broadcasting station in Urbana for the same reason. They're valued. "Can we continue to do that and how do we fund that? One could argue that that should be public money, not tuition dollars that supports those things."
Later, though, Easter said he mentioned the public stations "because I was trying to think of an example that was tangible. I'm no more serious about that than any other thing. I don't want to create anxiety there." UI officials portrayed any tuition increases as a last resort.
This story appeared online in The News-Gazette on March 20, 2015.
Read the entire article online.
Gov. Bruce Rauner's proposed budget calls for a 31.5 percent, or $209 million, reduction at the UI for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
In separate appearances before House and Senate appropriations committees, UI officials outlined possible areas for cuts: personnel, student employment, extension services, public broadcasting and more deferred maintenance.
But Republican members of both the Senate and the House prodded university officials to seek efficiencies and to embrace reforms, including changes in workers compensation and procurement policies.
At times, lawmakers seemed intent on getting UI President Robert Easter and Illinois State President Larry Dietz (who preceded him in both hearings) to endorse their partisan goals.
It likely was the final appearance before an appropriations committee for Easter, who officially steps down as president in May. "As I walked away, I thought, 'I won't have to do this again,'" he said with a smile minutes after wrapping up the Senate session. "I think the members are truly trying to help us in a very difficult situation. I didn't sense that it was an adversarial conversation at all. It was a conversation where they are trying to deal with some incredibly difficult issues. I don't envy them."
Although Easter has appointed a "leadership group" to prepare for cuts, he said it's too early to say what the university's response will be once the budget reductions — which are considered inevitable at some level — are enacted.
"But the programs that a land-grand university traditionally has managed and are a service to the public have to be paid by public resources."
In citing cuts to public services — one of the traditional missions of the university — Easter mentioned extension services that are offered in all 102 Illinois counties, and public broadcasting.
"We provide a myriad of services to the state," he told the House committee. "We operate a public broadcasting station here in Springfield for the benefit of the public. I'm not sure a year from now we can do that. We operate a public broadcasting station in Urbana for the same reason. They're valued. "Can we continue to do that and how do we fund that? One could argue that that should be public money, not tuition dollars that supports those things."
Later, though, Easter said he mentioned the public stations "because I was trying to think of an example that was tangible. I'm no more serious about that than any other thing. I don't want to create anxiety there." UI officials portrayed any tuition increases as a last resort.
This story appeared online in The News-Gazette on March 20, 2015.
Read the entire article online.
Friday, November 30, 2007
UIS Online featured on NPR
UIS Online featured prominently in a two-part report on National Public Radio's Morning Edition on November 28 and 29.
Listen to Part 1, or read a transcript
Listen to Part 2, or read a transcript
Listen to Part 1, or read a transcript
Listen to Part 2, or read a transcript
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