the mass media [extra]

Robert Novak, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, disappointed audience members at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last night by refusing to talk about his column that revealed the name of a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction.

On July 14, 2003, Novak named Valerie Plame, the wife of the retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, as a CIA operative—an occupation she had kept secret—in his Chicago Sun-Times column...

SEE ALSO: Princeton to consider grade caps.

A massive construction project at the University of Massachusetts is now underway, according to a Capital Plan presentation at the Faculty Senate Meeting yesterday.

Jim Cahill, the director of the Facilities and Planning Division of the Physical Plant, announced yesterday the upcoming plans for the university. For the next four years the university has allocated $536 million planned in project spending...

A judge has lifted an injunction that prevented Don Brown from coaching at Massachusetts.

Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Connolly blocked Brown, formerly the head coach at Northeastern, from taking his new job last month, saying Brown "willfully and intentionally" breached his contract with Northeastern in signing with Massachusetts...

"A House bill, which was among those backed by the coalition yesterday, would allow immigrant students who are high school graduates and have attended at least three years of high school in Massachusetts to be eligible for in-state tuition rates.

The bill, filed by state Representative Marie St. Fleur, a Boston Democrat, would affect about 400 immigrant students statewide per year, the coalition's executive director said. According to the University of Massachusetts at Boston website, nonresident tuition is $17,637 per year compared with $6,977 for resident undergraduates..."

Crimson: Two weeks after his scathing rebuke of alleged White House intelligence failures in front of the Sept. 11 commission, the former chief counterterrorism adviser to President Bush returned to a hero’s welcome at his Kennedy School of Government classroom yesterday.

Sporting a purple sweater—his sleeves rolled up—and an understated grin, Richard A. Clarke appeared to have weathered the weeks of intense scrutiny which accompanied his testimony and the release of his book, Against All Enemies, which alleges the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the war on terrorism...

Blogger Dimmy Karras comments on "university bashing" in this week's Globe stories on Boston University, UMass Amherst, and Northeastern.

I wonder if this is a week-long series that will trash BC, Harvard and MIT over the next few days?

Not like there's a shortage of material for that.

[via boston common]

MORE: The Globe's Alex Beam reports: "A three-year effort to hire a professor for a prestigious endowed chair at Boston College has again ended in failure, this time amid charges that the Rev. William Leahy, BC's president, rejected the leading candidates because they are gay..."

PLUS THIS: Someone writes into today's Globe op-ed page to explain why the UMass Amherst campus is in decay: "Over the past 40 years campus presidents and chancellors have targeted virtually all extra resources for academic growth, including special programs, while strangling maintenance efforts and marginalizing deferred maintenance problems..."

UMass Boston playwright Janet Kenney in residence gets Boston Phoenix mention.

A group of parents, community leaders, and others have just three weeks left before they must decide on how or whether Boston public schools should dismantle 30 years of crosstown busing...

UMass Boston does some work with the Boston Public Schools, with their science and math teachers. On the task force, though, here's UMB Professor Lisa Gonzalves:

"It's a huge responsibility," said task force member Lisa Gonsalves, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "The public is very passionate about this issue. Every night I go home and dream about how we are going to do this. The fear, of course, is we're going to go back to the community with our recommendations and we're going to get attacked, and that's hard."

Arnold Beichman is 90 years old, but you'd hardly know it, and he will turn 91 in May. During his nine decades he's met all-time baseball greats Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, and talked with presidents such as Harry S Truman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Beichman speaks eloquently about life in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, where he was a 1934 graduate of Columbia University and editor of its student newspaper. Later, as city editor for Marshall Fields' now defunct (but once highly regarded) daily, PM, he came into contact with many of the town's movers and shakers...

This bit from a Tufts Daily article on higher education cuts handed down from the legislature is interesting.

Romney has been accused of taking too much of a businesslike approach to state government, particularly in relation to the reorganization of the University of Massachusetts (UMass) system. Last year Romney cut $150 million from the UMass system amidst the budget cuts.

Fish said this attitude can be dangerous when applied to higher education.

"Non-university [officials] haven't the slightest idea [about how things run], nevertheless they dream up schemes based on corporate business," he said.

An "Armageddon" program designed to ensure that the federal government would continue to function in the aftermath of a nuclear war was put into place during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

According to ABC's "Nightline," which plans to report its findings tonight, every federal agency shifted its control to an alternate headquarters outside Washington. President Bush's decision to fly to Nebraska that day instead of returning to the White House, which drew some criticism at the time, was part of that plan, former counterterrorism official Richard A. Clarke said on the program...

Center on Media and Society conference tomorrow. George Stephanopoulos will be there. That's right. George Stephanopoulos. It's gonna be good.

Here's the schedule:

Breakfast with George Stephanopoulos.
Time: 8:30 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Place: UMass Boston Campus Center ballroom, 3rd Floor
Topic: “How the Media Influence Public Policy.”

Welcoming remarks: Chancellor JoAnn Gora, Trustee Jim Mahoney of Bank of America, Dean Edmund Beard of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, and Ellen Hume, Director of the Center on Media and Society.

Speakers: George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s Sunday show, “This Week,”
in conversation with veteran political columnist David Nyhan

George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning program, This Week, and formerly White House communications director under President Bill Clinton, will talk about “How the Media Influence Public Policy” with David Nyhan, veteran reporter on politics for Massachusetts newspapers. Guests will join the dialogue about the normally invisible role of the press in policy-making in Washington.

Ethnic Journalism Initiative.
Time: 10:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Place: Campus Center ballroom, 3rd Floor
Topic: “Ethnic and Community Journalism”

Speakers: Sandy Close, creator of the New California Media project; followed by a panel including Angel Bermudez of the Boston Foundation, Callie Crossley, veteran television journalist; Bill Forrey, Managing Editor, Reporter Newspapers; Charlot Lucien, local Haitian radio host; Alberto Vasallo III of El Mundo, Betty Kit-Fong Yau, local Chinese radio entrepreneur.

This brainstorming session will inaugurate the Center’s proposed project on local community and ethnic journalism. Sandy Close, who has for seven years built a successful ethnic media collaborative in California, will report on what they have done and Boston ethnic journalism leaders will offer their own views on what is needed, what is possible here. Attendees will be invited to join the discussion about the role of ethnic news media (Haitian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Cuban, etc.) in Boston and elsewhere in America in integrating (or protecting?) immigrant populations from the broader political culture, its rich potential in offering news that is overlooked by the other “mainstream” media,” and what the different media might gain through a joint initiative of story exchanges, conferences, job fairs and “ethnic Pulitzer prizes.”

“The Massachusetts Voter: Good News or Bad News?”
Time: 12:00 p.m. - 2 p.m. Luncheon
Place: Campus Center ballroom, 3rd Floor
Purpose: The new John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies will be celebrated with a luncheon.
Topic: “What is on the Mind of the Massachusetts Voter?”

Speakers: McCormack’s Lou DiNatale will release a special Massachusetts poll, highlighting public attitudes toward media, gay marriage, and other hot political issues. Harvard Professor Thomas Patterson will describe his research on the connection between news consumption and voting. A UMass Boston panel moderated by Dean Edmund Beard, including DiNatale, Carol Hardy-Fanta (Director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy) and Paul Watanabe (Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies) will discuss these findings with Patterson.

Panel Discussion: “Media, History and Identity” a discussion with Facing History and Ourselves
Time: 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Place: Campus Center ballroom, 3rd Floor
Topic: "From 'Birth of a Nation' to 'The Passion': Issues of Media and Identity"
Speaker: Adam Strom of Facing History and Ourselves, and Prof. Paul Bookbinder of UMass Boston will talk about how ethnic identity, depicted in such Hollywood films as “The Passion” and “Birth of a Nation,” can create challenging problems and opportunities for students and teachers. Facing History, which has for over 25 years been providing award-winning curriculum at high schools around the country, aims to help students learn from history how to make effective moral choices today.