The presidents of the University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi Valley State University received raises at the end of last year, according to meeting minutes from the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees’ November executive session. 

The raises, which took effect earlier this month, appear to have been granted after trustees discussed the job performances of USM President Joe Paul and MVSU President Jerryl Briggs, minutes show. 

“University presidents across the state and throughout the country are facing substantive challenges in an increasingly competitive environment, and it is important that good work in that environment is recognized and rewarded,” an IHL spokesperson wrote in a statement. 

The third highest-paid college president in the state, Paul is now making $700,000 a year, a $50,000 raise over his previous salary, meeting minutes show. The raise came from the state-funded portion of Paul’s salary while the USM Foundation will continue to pay him an annual supplement of $200,000. 

“I am thankful for the confidence and support of the IHL Board of Trustees, and I look forward to leading my alma mater for the next four years,” Paul said in a statement. “Meg and I have committed to contributing this salary increase and more to the USM Foundation and the Southern Miss Athletic Foundation over the time of my contract.”

Briggs will now make $310,000 a year, an increase of $10,000 in state funds. He will continue to receive a $5,000 supplement from the MVSU J.H. White Foundation. The IHL board renewed Briggs’ contract two years ago but did not grant him a raise. 

“I am deeply grateful for the support of the IHL Board and our university community,” Briggs said in a statement. “At Mississippi Valley State University, we remain steadfast in our commitment to fiscal responsibility, fostering enrollment growth, and expanding access to higher education opportunities for individuals in the Mississippi Delta and beyond. Together, we are truly ‘In Motion!’”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 17, 1931

Born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, James Earl Jones moved to his grandparents’ farm in Michigan at age 5. 

He had a stutter so severe, he hardly spoke. An English teacher realized his gift for writing poetry and had him recite poetry in front of the class, overcoming his stuttering. 

At the University of Michigan, he was majoring in pre-med when he discovered drama. After training troops in the Korean War, he starred in “Othello” at the Ramsdell Theatre in Michigan. In 1967, he starred opposite actress Jane Alexander in “The Great White Hope,” loosely based on heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and society’s demand for a white boxer that would defeat Johnson. The play began at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., before moving to Broadway, where the play, Jones and Alexander all won Tonys. In the film adaptation, Jones won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. 

He went on to play Shakespeare on Broadway and win another Tony, three Emmys and an honorary Oscar prior to his 2024 death. The first celebrity guest on “Sesame Street,” he may be best known for providing the voice for Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies and for Mufasa in Disney’s “The Lion King.” 

He saw the two biggest challenges to society as health and sanity. “I won’t say racism,” he said. “I say sanity because racism is a form of insanity.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed open to a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography, though the justices could still send it back to a lower court for more consideration of how the age verification measure affects adults’ free-speech rights.

Texas is among more than a dozen states with such laws aimed at blocking young children and teenagers from viewing pornography. The states argue the laws are necessary as online porn, including hardcore obscene material, has become almost instantaneous to access on smartphones online.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a member of the court’s conservative majority, raised similar concerns. “Technological access to pornography has exploded, right?” he said.

The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, says the Texas law wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online, making it vulnerable to hacking or tracking. The adult-content website Pornhub has stopped operating in several states, citing the technical and privacy hurdles in complying with the laws.

The Free Speech Coalition agrees that children shouldn’t be seeing pornography, but it argues the new law is so broadly written it could also apply to sexual education content or simulated sex scenes in movies.

The law also leaves a loophole by focusing on porn sites rather than the search engines often used to find porn, the group says in court documents. Content filtering is a better alternative to online age checks, it says.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared skeptical, pointing to the growing number of ways kids can get online.

“Content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with,” said Barrett, who has seven children.

This isn’t the first time the Supreme Court has confronted the issue. In 1996, the court struck down parts of a law banning explicit material viewable by kids online. In 2004, a divided Supreme Court ruled against a different federal law aimed at stopping kids from being exposed to pornography but said less restrictive measures like content filtering are constitutional.

Texas argues that technology has improved significantly in the last 20 years, allowing online platforms to quickly and easily check users’ ages with a quick picture, making it more like ID checks at traditional stores that were upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.

The states won in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a divided panel overturned a lower court and allowed the age verification requirement to go into effect. The Supreme Court previously refused an emergency appeal asking to put the age verification on hold while the legal fight continues.

Still, some of the nine justices worried that the lower court hadn’t applied a strict enough legal standard in determining whether the Texas law and others like that could run afoul of the First Amendment.

“How far can a state go in terms of burdening adults showing how old they are?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked.

Justice Elena Kagan raised the concerns of a possible “spillover dangers” on other laws touching on free speech, whichever way the court rules.

Some of the justices appeared interested in the Democratic Biden administration’s position that they should send the case back to the 5th Circuit for more consideration. The court could even say that such laws, when carefully written, could pass a higher standard since everyone agrees keeping porn away from kids is a worthy goal, said Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher.

Other states with similar laws include Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.

The Texas law carries fines of up to $10,000 per violation that could be raised to up to $250,000 per violation by a minor.

The court is expected to decide the case by June.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.