Tag Archives: alex fouirnaies

Research shows how industry spends to influence the legislative agenda

Harris scholar Alex Fouirnaies examines high value on access to agenda setters

Every year companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections in the United States. Yet studies of roll-call votes have shown that donations to specific office holders do not regularly yield the votes donors want. So why do industries continue to pour billions into the coffers of legislators? (more…)

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A composer, a president, and a dean share in conversation about creativity and expression

While working on a new piece, composer John Adams sometimes has to experience a deep sense of failure before his ideas really start to flow.

“You can win every prize in the book … but when you are alone with yourself in that room and what you are doing is not even worthy of a five-year-old — you can’t imagine how humiliating that is,” he told an audience in Sprague Memorial Hall on Oct. 16. “You have to get to that level of abject humility to finally get to point of being receptive, then ideas come. Usually when they come they’re dressed in extremely shabby clothes. You just have to go with it.” (more…)

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