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Preserving cultural heritage despite wars and tourism
D. Fairchild Ruggles is a professor of landscape architecture whose research explores the visual culture and built environment of the Islamic world. Ruggles also is co-director, with anthropology and landscape architecture professor Helaine Silverman, of a new interdisciplinary collaborative at Illinois called Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices. She was interviewed by News Bureau arts editor […]
Don’t let more frequent tornado warnings lull you into complacency
Ed Kieser is the chief meteorologist at WILL AM-FM-TV. He’s been educating the public about tornadoes for 16 years with free public tornado safety seminars. This year’s seminar is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 11, at the Beckman Institute Auditorium. On the evenings of March 12 and April 2, he and other WILL meteorologists stayed […]
Activist shareholders’ impact on corporate America
David Ikenberry is a professor of finance and the chair of the finance department in the College of Business. His research has focused on issues relating to stock-market returns as well as the informational efficiency of markets and the reasons why companies buy back their own stock. The growing influence of “activist stockholders” in corporate […]
Snapshot of the New Orleans recovery efforts
Rob Olshansky is a professor and the associate head of the department of urban and regional planning. His teaching and research focus on land use and environmental planning, with an emphasis on planning for natural hazards. He has written extensively on post-disaster recovery planning, and studied the topic during a recent sabbatical year at Kyoto […]
The new planet, Sedna, and where that leaves Pluto
James B. Kaler is a professor emeritus of astronomy and an award-winning author. As an astronomer, Kaler has studied stellar evolution, including planetary nebulae – the colorful remnants of dying stars. As a popularizer of astronomy, Kaler has written 10 books and numerous magazine articles. He was interviewed by News Bureau Physical Sciences Editor James […]
The ‘truth’ about memoirs
Philip Graham is a professor of English and the director of the English department’s Creative Writing Program. He is the author of two short-story collections and a novel, and a co-author with Alma Gottlieb of a prize-winning memoir of Africa. He also is the fiction editor of Ninth Letter, a journal of literature and the […]
The effect of the Patriot Act on library use
Leigh Estabrook is the director of the Library Research Center, a unit of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The center has conducted dozens of studies, including a series on the impact of the PATRIOT Act on libraries. Estabrook was the dean of the library school from 1986 to 2001. She was interviewed […]
Increased insecurity in pensions and retirement
Richard L. Kaplan has been on the faculty of the College of Law since 1979. His major research interests include health-care financing, pensions and federal tax policy. He developed one of the nation’s first law school courses on elder law, a specialty that ties together many of his interests, and serves as faculty adviser for […]
How would a gross receipts tax affect Illinois consumers?
J. Fred Giertz has been on the faculty of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and a University of Illinois professor of economics since 1980. His major research interests are public finance and regional economic development. He specializes in state and local taxation and follows the Illinois economy closely as the monthly analyst of […]
Reflections on media coverage of the war in Iraq
College of Media Dean Ron Yates is a professor of journalism and a former award-winning foreign correspondent, national correspondent, metropolitan editor, national editor and senior writer for Chicago Tribune. What have we learned from the front-line coverage of the current war in Iraq that is different than the coverage of Vietnam or other recent conflicts? […]