The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute is located at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. It was founded by Paul Simon, a former two-term U.S. Senator from Illinois and one-time candidate for the Democratic Party (United States) nomination for President of the United States. Opening in 1997, the Institute differentiates itself from similar organizations by working directly with elected officials and others to fashion and implement change in public policy.
The institute is bi-partisan and sponsors many on-campus programs featuring state and local politicians, educators, entrepreneurs, and many others. Throughout the year, the institute hosts lectures, and conferences around relevant topics featuring significant and controversial issues impacting the region, the state, the nation, and the world. The institute also conducts two polls throughout the year: Simon Institute Poll and the Southern Illinois Poll. Being located at SIUC, the Institute offers a variety of opportunities for students, including the Paul Simon Institute Ambassadors, which allows students to network and volunteer their time in assisting the Institute staff in outreach efforts to the campus and community.
The current director of the institute is David Yepsen, who before joining the Institute, had a 34 year career with the Des Moines Register, serving as the paper’s chief political writer, political editor and political columnist. As part of his work, he was deeply involved in the paper’s coverage of presidential caucus campaigns in the state. Before Yepsen's arrival in 2009, Mike Lawrence, press secretary and senior policy adviser to Governor Jim Edgar for nearly a decade, served as director from October 2004 to November 2008. Simon served as Institute director from 1997 to his death in 2003. Simon died in Springfield, Illinois following heart surgery at the age of 75 in 2003.
Read more about Paul Simon Public Policy Institute: History
Famous quotes containing the words simon, public, policy and/or institute:
“And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.”
—Paul Simon (b. 1941)
“The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorise the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.”
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
“If matrimony be really beneficial to society, the custom that ... married women alone are allowed any claim to place, is as useful a piece of policy as ever was invented.... The ridicule fixed on the appellation of old maid hath, I doubt not, frightened a very large number into the bonds of wedlock.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)