Mississippi Today
Only JSU alum on IHL board votes against allowing acting president to apply for permanent role
A slim majority of the governing board for Mississippi’s eight public universities voted to allow Elayne Hayes-Anthony, Jackson State University‘s temporary acting president, to apply for the permanent role.
According to executive session minutes released Wednesday, seven trustees voted for the motion and five voted against, including Dr. Steven Cunningham, the only Jackson State alumnus on the board and the trustee who is leading the university’s presidential search.
Cunningham, a Hattiesburg-based radiologist, told Mississippi Today that he didn’t want to dissuade outside candidates from applying for the role. In recent years, the IHL board has tended to hire interim presidents instead of conducting a full-blown national search at the state’s universities.
โI just didn’t want anybody to be scared off,โ Cunningham told Mississippi Today.
The vacancy at Jackson State, a historically Black university and the largest university in Mississippi’s capital city, comes after Thomas Hudson, who had been interim before getting the permanent position, became the third president in a row to resign earlier this year.
Though Hayes-Anthony said she was interested in the permanent post shortly after the board appointed her to the temporary position in March, trustees did not vote to allow her to apply until June, the minutes show. She could not be reached for comment by press time.
If the board hires Hayes-Anthony, the Jackson native and former chair of the university’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies would be the third consecutive internal hire within the state’s universities system. The tenures of the past two presidents at Jackson State โ William Bynum, Jr., who was hired from Mississippi Valley State University, and Hudson โ both ended in resignation.
Cunningham said he was voting for a thorough national search.
โIt all comes down to the process,โ he said. โAs long as the process is an even process.โ
Earlier this week, the Jackson Advocate’s Ivory Phillips reported that IHL Commissioner Al Rankins said the presidential search committee is working to make a hire by the end of the calendar year. A high-profile alumnus and a previous applicant that was highly rated are among the current applicants.
Cunningham told Mississippi Today that the search committee has received about 45 applications and is expecting more by the Aug. 21 deadline.
At a March press conference, Hayes-Anthony said she would be in the role as long as she is needed.
She also acknowledged the board has imposed various stipulations on her role. She said she could hire and fire people in coordination with Rankins. An IHL spokesperson said the board has not placed more restrictions on Hayes-Anthony than any other temporary or interim president in the system.
Last month, Hayes-Anthony wrote in a campus-wide email that Brandi Newkirk-Turner, the associate provost, had been reassigned but would remain as a faculty member in the Department of Communicative Disorders. Newkirk-Turner was among the administrators who received a no-confidence vote from the faculty senate earlier this year.
Hours later, Hayes-Anthony sent another email that Newkirk-Turner’s reassignment had been rescinded and she would remain associate provost.
READ MORE: โAs long as I’m needed’: JSU acting president has no timetable from IHL for appointment
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1750
Nov. 4, 1750
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the โFather of Chicago,โ was born.
A man of African descent, he became the first known settler in the area that became the city of Chicago. He married a Potawatomi woman, Kitiwaha (Catherine), and they had two children.
According to records, the property included a log cabin with two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, a smokehouse, a fenced garden and an orchard. At his trading post, DuSable served Native Americans, British and French explorers and spoke a number of languages.
โHe was actually arrested by the British for being thought of as an American Patriot sympathizer,โ Julius Jones, curator at the Chicago History Museum told WLS, but DuSable beat those charges.
In Chicago today, a school, street, museum, harbor, park and bridge bear his name. The place where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River is now a National Historic Landmark, part of the city’s Pioneer Court.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Mississippiโs top election official discusses Tuesdayโs election
Secretary of State Michael Watson talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance ahead of Tuesday’s election. He urges voters to remember sacrifices many have made to protect Americans’ voting rights and get to the polls, and he weighs in on whether a recent court ruling on absentee vote counting will impact this year’s elections.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Insurance chief willing to sue feds if Gov. Reeves doesnโt support state health exchangeย
State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is willing to sue the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if it does not allow Mississippi to create a state-based health insurance exchange because of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential opposition.
Federal officials, who must approve of a state implementing its own health insurance exchange, want a letter of approval from a state’s governor before they allow a state to implement the program, according to Chaney.
โI don’t know what the governor’s going to do,โ Chaney told Mississippi Today. โI think he’ll probably wait until after the election to make a decision. But I’m willing to sue CMS if that’s what it takes.โ
The five-term commissioner, a Republican, said his requests to Reeves, also a Republican, to discuss the policy have gone unanswered. The governor’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.
Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law authorizing Chaney’s agency to create a Mississippi-based exchange to replace the federal exchange that currently is used by Mississippians to obtain health insurance. The bill became law without the governor’s signature.
States that operate their own exchanges can typically attract more companies to write health insurance policies and offer people policies at lower costs, and it would likely save the state millions of dollars in payments to the federal government.
Chaney also said he’s been consulting with former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who also supported some version of a state-based exchange while in office, about implementing a state-based program.
Currently, 21 states plus the District of Columbia have state-based exchanges, though three still operate from the federal platform. Should he follow through and sue the federal government, Chaney said he would use outside counsel and several other states told him they would join the lawsuit.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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