Paul Simon Public Policy Institute

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 bipartisan 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.

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 John T. Shaw, an author and journalist who for more than 20 years covered the United States Congress for Market News International, a global financial wire service. His published works include: JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency; Washington Diplomacy; The Ambassador: Inside the Life of a Working Diplomat; Richard G. Luger, Statesman of the Senate; and Rising Star, Setting Sun: Dwight D. Eisenhauer, John F. Kennedy, and the Presidential Transition that Changed America.

Previous directors include David Yepsen, who served from 2009 to 2016, and Mike Lawrence, who served as director from 2004 to 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.

Initiatives[]

Restoring American Statesmanship: A Citizen's Guide[]

In March 2020, the Institute published "Restoring American Statesmanship: A Citizen's Guide," a resource for elected officials, businesses, schools, foundations, civic groups and policy institutes.^[2] The publication seeks to imagine what a rebirth of statesmanship will look like in Illinois and the United States during a pivotal time in American history.

Understanding Our New World: A Livestream Discussion Series[]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute launched the livestream discussion series "Understanding Our New World." Government and private sector leaders, policy experts, historians, diplomats, philanthropists and military leaders have joined Institute Director John Shaw to discuss how our political, economic, social and public health circumstances are being transformed in fundamental ways. Notable guests have included former Irish President Mary Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Kennedy, former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times Carl Hulse and former U.S. presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

Renewing Illinois[]

The Institute launched the Renewing Illinois program in the spring of 2019 with a summit of university students from across the state. The inaugural event's theme was "Ambitious Dreams and Practical Steps to Revive the Prairie State." In 2020, the theme was to be "One Illinois: Noble Aspiration or Impossible Dream?" The 2020 summit was reformatted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Institute developed a booklet with letters from Illinois General Assembly leaders, a reflection of the time by one of the state's leading historians, and several travel essays that underscore the beauty and diversity of the state. While preparing for the 2020 summit, the Institute asked 25 prominent Illinoisans to respond to the question: "If you were teaching an 'Illinois 101' course to highly motivated undergraduates, what five books would you assign them to read?" The result is the Institute's "Illinois 101 Recommended Reading List" containing essential reading about Illinois history and politics.

Paul Simon-Jim Edgar Prairie State Statesmanship Award[]

On Nov. 16, 2020, former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar and Paul Simon Public Policy Institute Director John Shaw announced a new annual award that celebrates exceptional leadership in Illinois.^[3] The award will go to leaders who display vision, courage, compassion, civility, effectiveness and bipartisanship in their work. The award will be announced at the August meeting of the Edgar Fellows Program.

History[]

Paul Simon lived for many years in the small town of Makanda, south of Carbondale, where he was a professor and director of the SIU Public Policy Institute. There, he worked to foster the Institute into becoming a thinktank that could advance the lives of all people. Activities included going to Liberia and Croatia to monitor their elections, bringing major speakers to campus, denouncing the death penalty, trying to end the United States embargo against Cuba,^[4] fostering political courage among his students, and promoting amendments to the Constitution to end the Electoral College and to limit the president to a single six-year term of office. Concerning the Electoral College during the controversial Election 2000 fiasco, Simon said, "I think if somebody gets the majority vote, they should be president. But, I don't think the system is going to be changed."

Simon believed modern presidents practice "followship" rather than leadership: "We have been more and more leaning on polls to decide what we're going to do, and you don't get leadership from polls... and not just at the presidential level. It's happening with senators, House members and even state legislators sometimes [when they] conduct polls to find out where people stand on something."^[5]

References[]

External links[]

• Paul Simon Public Policy Institute