For the past two years, there has been an unfortunate ritual at the end of the spring semester at The University of Texas at Austin. While students are cramming for finals and packing up to leave town for the summer, their elected student leaders must plead with the UT System Board of Regents to avoid unnecessary and unwarranted decisions that would have damaging, long-lasting effects on our institution.

Recently, Texas Monthly reported that Chairman of the Board of Regents Gene Powell instructed Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa to fire UT Austin President Bill Powers. While Chancellor Cigarroa has denied this, based on actions and comments over the past year and a half, it is apparent that some members of the Board of Regents would like to see President Powers removed from office.

Last year, students fought against a lack of transparency from the regents and the possible forced implementation of “breakthrough solutions” that would split the university’s teaching and research mission. Now students are responding again, but this time because the threat from our governing board is aimed squarely at our institution’s leadership.

When these latest rumors of Powers’ job security surfaced, students and alumni took to the Internet to show their support for the President and his vision. A Facebook group called “I STAND WITH BILL POWERS” has over 11,000 members, and the Twitter hashtag “#SaveBillPowers” was trending in Austin when news broke. Supporters organized a pledge card drive and created a website, www.standwithpowers.org, where supporters can sign a letter supporting Powers.

UT Austin has become a university of the first class and an example for both the state and the nation on excellence in higher education. Under Powers’ leadership, UT Austin has become a leading force in innovative teaching methods, a national model for core curriculum reform, and has attracted many scholars at the top of their fields.

Despite political repercussions, Bill Powers has fought for the university and continues to push back against unproven methods. He provides the steady and stable leadership that our university needs during a time of instability for higher education in Texas. Our university is headed in the right direction and toward a brighter future.

The threat against Powers is not because he publicly disagreed with the regents’ decision to freeze tuition rates—it is because he refuses to accept harmful reforms that would damage our institution and decrease the value of a UT Austin degree.

We came to UT Austin because we strive to be the best, and we refuse to be complacent. The threat against Powers is real. The threat against the university is real. Students, alumni, faculty, and community members have rallied around the president because we believe in his vision for the university, and we will continue to support him. We will always fight against changes that could damage and threaten the quality of our institution.

The UT Austin community has made it perfectly clear where they stand. We stand with President Powers.

Michael Morton, President, Senate of College Councils 

Thor Lund, President, Student Government 

Michael Redding, President, Graduate Student Assembly 

Photo courtesy Photobucket user Ed Marchedrick

Can’t see this slideshow? Click here.

Magnificent red oaks, cedar elms, and other trees native to Texas—some more than a century old—will be the stars of the Mollie Steves Zachry Texas Arboretum opening at UT’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on Saturday.

The largest native plant arboretum in Texas, the 16-acre addition to the Wildflower Center also includes an expansive native meadow, shade for picnic areas, and developing tree collections, one of which will feature all 54 oak species native to Texas.

“I think that guests will get a really great sense of how special Texas trees can be,” says Damon Waitt, senior director of the Wildflower Center. “I think they’ll find it’s a place they can relax a little bit.”

The grand opening will begin with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the arboretum entryway, the Trailhead Garden, and a one-fifth mile walk through the Xeric Collection and the Hall of Texas Heroes exhibit to the Native Meadow area.

Children’s author Margaret Hall Spencer will read her poem, “My City Tree Cares for Me,” at 2 p.m. in the Cathedral, a grove of live oaks equipped with swings and benches, followed by a talk by photographer Ralph Yznaga at 3 p.m. in the Arboretum Pavilion. Yznaga, author of Living Witness: Historic Trees of Texas, will discuss historic Texas trees, as well as sign his book in the Center’s store at noon.

The arboretum resulted from a $1.4 million gift, announced in August 2010, from an anonymous fund of the San Antonio Area Foundation at the request of philanthropist Mollie Steves Zachry.

“We are incredibly grateful to Mollie for her generosity in creating this treasure,” says Susan Rieff, executive director of the Wildflower Center. “The arboretum will be a peaceful place to relish the outdoors among majestic trees that help define the state’s iconic landscapes. It also provides new opportunities for education and research.”

Photos by Bruce Leander, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

On the plane from New York City to Silicon Valley, William Lynch Jr. sits in thought, scribbling notes on his ever-growing to-do list. To any other passenger, this tall, lanky businessman looks like just another commuter trying to pass the long flight by getting work done.

But for those scanning the New York Times, thumbing through People, or paging through The Help, William Lynch, BA ’92, is one of the most important people in the United States. He’s the CEO of Barnes & Noble, and he’s got the weight of the book-reading—and publishing—worlds on his shoulders.

Once thought of as the capitalistic enemy of smaller, independent bookstores, Barnes & Noble—with its 703 bookstores in all 50 states—now appears to be the print industry’s last hope as readers move more toward online purchasing and digital media. The New York Times calls the giant chain’s battle “the bookstore’s last stand”—and says Lynch holds the fate of American book publishing in his hands.

In only his second year at the helm of the 150-year-old Fortune 500 company, Lynch first is trying mightily to reconcile the traditional book-buying experience with the e-books being hawked by rival Amazon. Surveys indicate that only one-third of consumers walk into a bookstore with a certain title in mind. The thought of losing this in-store browsing effect scares the daylights out of publishers.

“It’d be a big game-changer if Barnes & Noble went under,” leading New York publishing consultant Jack Perry says. “People browse—the physical bookstore and storefront are truly marketing tools. If that experience was completely lost, it would be devastating to the publishing industry.”

Ratcheting up the pressure even further, selling print books in an e-reader age could be likened to being a pricey calligrapher in the age of Gutenberg. Lynch had no publishing or bookselling experience prior to joining the company, and now he’s suddenly a calligrapher trying to innovate. For his company, it’s do or die out; publish or perish.

The Grand Plan

So how does America’s last major bookstore chain hope to survive the plague that has already killed off Borders and nearly 500 independent bookstores since 2002? Simple, Lynch says. Enhance the reading experience.

“This company was built to be a terrific brick-and-mortar company, but we didn’t have the competency in digital media,” Lynch says. “For 30 years, it was about putting the next Barnes & Noble store in the next city in the next state. With the world changing, we had to find new ways to grow—and that meant a non-book product.”

Cue the NOOK, Barnes & Noble’s answer to the wildly successful Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle; it also happens to be Lynch’s baby. Nearly one-third of Americans now own an e-reader, and more than one-third of e-book buyers report decreased spending at national bookstore chains, according to the Book Industry Study Group.

So jumping into the e-reader market—an industry estimated at just shy of $2 billion—was the only logical choice for Lynch. The company’s NOOK products include both black-and-white and color e-readers, and the newly debuted NOOK Tablet loaded with features like Netflix and Hulu Plus, plus instant connections to more than 2.5 million books and magazines.

“I love launching new products, and the NOOK is a whole new product,” Lynch says. “It’s about defining an unmet need in the marketplace and building something that’s never been. It just doesn’t get cooler than that for me.”

But will Barnes & Noble’s foray into digital media, conducted under Lynch’s command, be enough to preserve the company’s formidable place in the U.S. economy?

“The future is unknown,” Perry says. “There will be winners and losers; just because you’ve had success in the past doesn’t mean you’ll be successful today.”

Equipped with sheer determination—and an undergraduate education from UT—Lynch is ready to rethink publishing and bookselling.

Makings of a CEO

The child of a French mother, whom he calls a “real renaissance lady,” and a Philadelphian father, Lynch grew up in a suburb of Dallas. There he discovered a love of education and the arts—two passions not quite in line with football-obsessed Texas culture.

“I was a flat-out geek if I’m being honest,” Lynch says. “I could recite poetry. I’d definitely say I was a little different.”

Despite his fit outside the Texas mainstream, the self-professed late-bloomer excelled at sports like wrestling and was a typical mischievous teenage boy. Once, when he was looking at colleges, Lynch visited his older sister at UT for Round-Up and borrowed her gold Audi 5000 for a date—which quickly ended when he wrapped the car around a tree.

“That resulted in a quick flight home to face my dad,” Lynch laughs.

Though that first experience with The University of Texas wasn’t all that pleasant, Lynch was hooked. He enrolled in the McCombs School of Business—but the future CEO had no plans to run a Fortune 500 company one day.

“I didn’t have a sense of purpose,” Lynch says. “There are those people who are 16 and just know. Some other CEOs had lemonade stands. Me, I’ve always had jobs—but I just wanted to see the world.”

Lynch opted to study economics for its combination of science and the humanities, and he quickly fell in love with life on the Forty Acres. “I had never seen an environment like that in Texas before,” he says. “There was an appreciation for music and the arts. It suited my personality to a T.”

The Silver Spur passed his free time juggling a full course load and spending sunny afternoons at Dry Creek Saloon drinking beer with housemate Jon Hamm, ’89 (yes, the Mad Men star, who later transferred to Mizzou).

“Jon had a good sense of humor and was a great athlete—we killed it in our intramural football league,” Lynch says of his friend. “Just a humble, great guy.”

Even during his time at UT, Lynch was willing to take on any challenge—including dreaded calculus and engineering classes—but he wasn’t keen on taking too many risks. He admits, “Getting out of bed as an 18-year-old was the biggest risk in itself.”

So how did this play-it-safe youngster become the man who holds the future of hard-copy publishing in his hands? Easy—by jetting off to the epicenter of almost every industry in the nation: New York City.

Road to B&N

“My dad encouraged me to come to Manhattan right out of school because it causes you to up your game,” Lynch says. “Marketing, fashion, advertising—the top of the top are here.”

During his early career, Lynch decided to pursue his MBA at the Columbia School of Business—quite a feat considering he was working full-time concurrently.

And then, starting with stints in brand management at Seagram Universal and Guinness, Lynch ventured into the online world, co-founding Gifts.com and eventually landing the position of executive vice president of marketing and general manager of HSN.com.

In 2009, Lynch joined Barnes & Noble as president of its website and was responsible for all of the company’s e-commerce operations. Then, in March of 2010—just a year after joining the company—he rocketed up to chief executive officer, a position that put him at the forefront of the book-publishing industry.

“I had been in technology for 10 years at that point; it was what the company needed at the time,” Lynch says. “As technology moved forward, they needed leadership to take them there.”

And take them there he did. A youthful 42, Lynch has managed to introduce four competitive e-readers to guide Barnes & Noble into the digital age. The company even estimates they now have a 27 to 30 percent share of the e-book market, which executives hope will grow thanks to a reduction in the price of the NOOK Tablet to $199.

“William was a natural fit at Barnes & Noble,” says Clifford Wolff, Lynch’s private counsel and a friend of 14 years. “The company needed to reinvent itself at that very moment. William gave Barnes & Noble a vision and direction they simply didn’t have before—and the proof is in the pudding.”

The Risks Ahead

Still, the odds stack up against Lynch’s efforts as his company continues to report revenue losses. In February, Barnes & Noble suffered a 14 percent fiscal third-quarter net income loss, according to the Associated Press.

One bright spot: holiday sales. “One thing we learned from this holiday season is long live the book,” Lynch says. “Physical book business actually grew this holiday. People still love books.” Traditional book sales for Barnes & Noble rose 4 percent during last year’s holiday months, which some attributed partly to the fact that 2011 was the first year rival Borders hadn’t been around to compete.

Lynch owns a NOOK himself but admits that even he is still holding on to that feeling of turning actual pages. On his current reading list: The Help, Fly Fishing magazine, the latest Economist, and Americans in Paris.

“I’m sort of reading eight or nine things at once, and I don’t read them all on the NOOK,” he says. “Almost all my book reading is on the NOOK and 50 percent of magazines, but I have to have a physical New York Times.”

Now residing in Greenwich, Conn., with wife Nicole, 7-year-old Lily, 5-year-old Jack, and baby Charlotte, Lynch—a massive Longhorn football fan—tries to get back to his alma mater two or three times each year to take in a game and visit old friends. “A lot of my best friends are the friends I made at Texas,” he says.

How someone in his position can feel comfortable leaving a radically changing company under so much pressure for even a day is mind-blowing, but Lynch insists he’s not alone in his quest to save the books of hard-copy past. “If you have too much pressure, you need to hire better people,” he says. “If it’s on any one person, you aren’t going to succeed.”

That’s not to say Lynch doesn’t have doubts. After all, he’s pioneering an approach to reading unlike any other, promoting an industry where both hard-copy and digital-copy books can coexist.

“I still worry that we’re not moving fast enough,” he says. “Change is really hard, and more fail than succeed. We’re fortunate to see a lot of success; we just have to keep continuing to innovate.”

Will it work, or are bookstores destined to become relics of a pre-digital time? Whether books continue to publish, or perish like the eight-track tapes and records of yesteryear, this is a story we’ll have to read on to find out.

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez. Photo by Gabrielle Revere.

Four hundred and fifty miles west of The University of Texas at Austin, thirty-seven miles (as the car drives) north of Marfa, and almost 6,800 feet above sea level sit the white and silver domes of the McDonald Observatory. Each dome shelters an enormous yet delicate, tool: a combination of mirrors, metal, and electronics capable of gathering light from long ago and far, far away.

Decades are a relatively tiny unit of temporal measurement on an astronomical scale, and the distances between terrestrial points are vanishingly small compared to the distances between celestial bodies. In historical terms, however, the transformation of the McDonald Observatory from a peripheral start-up into an internationally recognized hub of scientific research was no small step. The forty-year interval between 1934 when the observatory came into existence and 1973 when McDonald personnel and UT faculty traveled to Mauritania to study the longest solar eclipse of the twentieth century was a period of truly giant leaps for science in America and in the southwest in particular.

It was during those years that the National Science Foundation was born and grew into an institution of enormous financial importance for researchers. The McDonald Observatory, like many other science facilities, owes a great deal of its success to the NSF and to the political environment that prompted its creation.

The land and money for the observatory came from the estate of William Johnson McDonald, born in Texas in 1844. McDonald served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and later became a wealthy banker. When he died in 1926, his will bequeathed nearly one million dollars to UT for an observatory.

By 1934, UT had an observatory in the mountains of west Texas but no astronomers to staff it. The school’s lack of trained astronomers reflected a gap in the scientific capabilities of western and eastern universities prior to the Second World War. Historian George Webb describes the southwest in the early twentieth century as a “colony” of American science: the region was valuable to eastern-based researchers as a source of exotic flora and fauna, and to astronomers for its dark, clear skies, but it lacked top-tier research institutions of its own. New facilities like UT’s McDonald Observatory began to narrow the gap, but it had to fill positions with scientists from the University of Chicago.

World War II brought about a major restructuring of federal financial support for academic science research. Scientists’ contributions to the war effort proved invaluable and the sparsely populated southwest had offered an ideal testing ground for dangerous and highly classified projects. McDonald Observatory staff, for example, took part in military rocket propulsion studies in the New Mexico badlands near the secret atomic research complex at Los Alamos.

Toward the end of the war Vannevar Bush, head of the military’s Office of Scientific Research and Development and a former MIT administrator, drafted a proposal for a new federal agency devoted to science funding. Bush’s vision was realized in 1950 with the creation of the National Science Foundation, whose mission was to support the development of academic science programs and research facilities throughout the nation.

Prior to the establishment of the NSF, university science departments had received the bulk of their funds from state governments, private donors, and student tuition. Over the course of the 1950s the NSF’s purse grew to surpass anything these sources could have matched. The Foundation’s first annual budget was a modest $3.5 million, but when the Soviet Union launched the satellite known as Sputnik in 1957 Congress raised the figure to $130 million. By 1970, the NSF commanded half a billion dollars each year and had distributed a grand total of $4.72 billion to science departments around the country.

Universities turned NSF grants into state-of-the-art facilities and cutting-edge equipment.  The McDonald Observatory was one of many university-affiliated institutions that received new equipment and made significant discoveries in the postwar decades.  At the close of the 1940s Gerard Kuiper, a University of Chicago astronomer, used McDonald Observatory equipment to discover new moons around Uranus and Neptune.

Between 1963 and 1967, NASA granted five million dollars to the McDonald Observatory to help build a new reflector telescope with a 107-inch lens, a substantial upgrade.  It was also during the 1960s that UT severed the McDonald Observatory’s ties with Chicago and created its own Department of Astronomy.

Texas recruited Harlan J. Smith, a Yale astronomer, to chair the new department and head up the observatory.  To the Harvard-educated Smith, leaving Yale for Texas was like entering an “astronomical wilderness.”

But Harlan Smith dreamed big, and saw opportunities where others saw obstacles.  For example, he spoke publicly and often of his desire to see humans colonize the moon and Mars.  He imagined setting up an observatory on the far side of the moon, and eventually made sketches of such a hypothetical extraterrestrial installation.  He also directed his energies toward more immediate projects.  In addition to overseeing the construction of the new, NASA-funded reflector, Smith won a NASA grant to refurbish the observatory’s two original telescopes.  He also reached out to the general public by helping to create a syndicated radio program devoted to astronomy news and facts, Stardate, which still airs on public radio stations nationwide.

By the early 1970s, the McDonald Observatory was ready to embark on its most ambitious project to date: an expedition to the deserts of northwest Africa to conduct delicate observations of a solar eclipse that would take place on the morning of June 30, 1973.

By photographing stars that become visible near a fully eclipsed sun and comparing those images to photographs of the same stars at night when the sun is not present, slight differences in the apparent positions of the stars should become visible. The disparity is the result of the sun’s gravity bending the path of starlight that passes near it. Ever since Albert Einstein predicted this gravitational deflection of light as part of his theory of relativity, scientists realized the importance of measuring the exact amount of bend. Among its most familiar applications today, the calculations are used to acquire more precise GPS satellite measurements.

The 1973 eclipse, however, would not be visible over McDonald or any other such structure in North America. Scientists would have to journey to a part of the globe few outsiders knew well, where sandstorms and 110-degree heat threatened to wreak havoc on their delicate instruments. The eager scientists of the McDonald Observatory hoped the NSF would agree to finance the high-risk, high-cost, high-reward expedition to a site in the newly-independent Islamic republic of Mauritania.

In May 1972 the observatory’s planning team drafted a NSF grant application for the amount of $302,848.  Several factors made approval of the grant unlikely.  First, the UT team was not the only group requesting NSF money to travel to Africa for the eclipse.  Second, the amount the team requested was unrealistic in the political and economic climate of 1972.  The NSF requested $622 million in 1972, a record high, but the funding it received still didn’t compensate for inflation.

Using 1972 dollars as a baseline, federal funding for academic research grew by an average of thirteen percent each year between 1953 and 1968, but zero percent for the period 1968 to 1974.  Economic problems, social turmoil, and the ongoing war in Vietnam drove policymakers in Washington toward greater fiscal austerity.  In 1971 scientists feared that the NSF was becoming more sensitive to federal politics than to their research needs.

From June 1970 to March 1971 the NSF received 20,000 grant requests for a total amount of $2 million.  Of these, the foundation approved fewer than 7000 grants and distributed only $320,000 to support new projects.  In September 1972, Smith received a form letter from the NSF bearing the worst possible news: the foundation had rejected the team’s grant application.  Yet hope was not lost.  The team scrambled to find other sources of funding and eventually received sizable grants from NATO and the National Geographic Society.  They slashed their budget by trimming the expedition to its bare essentials, and submitted a new proposal to the NSF for $65,000.  UT received notification of NSF approval on December 19, 1972.  The McDonald expedition was officially a go.

The story of the team’s travels in Mauritania is fascinating from cultural, political, and scientific perspectives.  Interested readers should consult team member David Winget’s memoir of the experience, Harlan’s Globetrotters: The Story of an Eclipse.  The team faced persistent heat and a sandstorm on the morning of the eclipse that only cleared ten minutes before the long-awaited event.  Despite these obstacles they successfully captured high-resolution images of a starfield near the eclipsed sun and used those photographs to calculate a value of light deflection consistent with Einstein’s predictions.  Though this was not the final experiment to put Einstein’s theory to the test, it was perhaps the last of its kind.  Later efforts would employ new technologies such as space-based telescopes and radio astronomy rather than risking ground-based visual observations under challenging field conditions.

Yet it is precisely the difficult and costly nature of the 1973 McDonald expedition that makes it a significant event in the history of American scientific research.  The ambitious project was possible only because of the revolution that had taken place in science funding during World War II and the early Cold War, a development that breathed new life into once-marginal facilities like the McDonald Observatory.  The Mauritania mission was a demonstration of how far the observatory—and American and southwestern science writ large—had come, and how far each party to the process was willing to go to uncover the universe’s secrets.

This article first appeared on Not Even Past.

Photos: Dan Pancamo via Flickr Creative Commons; “Mr. Vannevar Bush. Chief of Scientific Research and Development, Office of Production Management (OPM)”; Library of Congress; Michael Cummings via Flickr Creative Commons; Mauritanian stamp; John C. McConnell via Flickr Creative Commons.

A $100,000 donation from the Once Upon a Time Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising awareness about philanthropy, enabled the students to turn around and give that money to two worthy organizations after considering 32 possibilities.

Freshman Maclean Martin presented a check for $56,000 to Lone Star Paralysis, a local foundation focused on medical research and on recovery for people with spinal cord injuries.  Speaking to representatives of Lone Star Paralysis, including executive director Mike Haynes, Martin said he was “totally floored by the opportunity to give.”

The remaining $44,000 was presented by freshman Jorge Wong to KIVA, a non-profit micro-finance institution based in San Francisco that enables anyone to lend money online to individual entrepreneurs worldwide. The class was attracted to the mission of KIVA because of their studies about the debilitating effects of poverty, which KIVA is dedicated to combating through the efficiency of micro-loans.

Such a success was Woodruff’s class that his students have already organized an official follow-up group in order to mentor the students in next year’s class. It will be structured as a history course taught by Pamela Paxton.

But Woodruff’s ultimate hope was the class would embody the philosophy that “to live a complete and flourishing successful human life, you must have the opportunity to be generous.” The obvious hope and enthusiasm in the classroom during the ceremony certainly was proof enough that this bold and innovative UT experience was one that will stay with these students for a long time to come.

But on Monday, as President Powers took the podium, the crowded Main Building room erupted into incessant applause and a standing ovation for UT-Austin’s leader.

At the meeting, the Faculty Council honored Powers’ continued commitment to UT-Austin with a resolution stating that the group stands firmly with him amid rumors that his job as UT president is in jeopardy.

Faculty Council chair Alan Friedman read the resolution, which called Powers’ suggested tuition hike “crucial,” aloud to a room filled to the brim with students, faculty, and staff who have elected to stand by UT’s president.

“I think the fact that there are so many of you here today,” Friedman said, “means that you recognize what is at stake—what’s going on this campus, in the UT System, and higher education in the state and in this country as a whole.”

The resolution passed almost unanimously, with the exception of one Faculty Council member who found fault in the resolution’s wording and declined to vote. He said: “It is unfortunate that our support of President Powers is being tied to the question of tuition increases.”

He was the lone dissenter. Many took to the mic to express their support, including College of Education dean Manuel Justiz, who announced that all of UT’s academic deans unanimously approved the resolution. Campus organizations that publicly endorsed the council’s actions include the Hispanic Faculty Staff Association and the Graduate Student Assembly.

When she had the floor, outgoing student body president Natalie Butler pointed out that opposing tuition increases and supporting Powers are not mutually exclusive, to which many students lining the walls of the room nodded in agreement. Another student called for an end to political games.

Looking out at the crowd, many of who were holding “I Stand With Bill Powers” postcards, Powers took a moment to show his appreciation.

“Let me just say thank you,” Powers said. “Those words seem inadequate, they really do. I cannot tell you how much this means to me, and to Kim, and my family.”

October 15, 2004. Journalism students still review the moment as a dramatic case study on the intersection of TV and politics.

Comedian Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire debate program as a guest—but quickly went off the rails.

Instead of making funny quips about his Daily Show, he stayed deadly serious as he criticized Crossfire and its black-and-white debate style. “Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” he begged hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.

TIME named the episode one of the top 10 TV feuds ever. Not long after, CNN canceled Crossfire.

At the center of that pivotal moment was a Longhorn. Paul Begala is a former UT student body president turned White House aide turned on-air analyst. The tense moments with Stewart weren’t funny, Begala says, but they weren’t as crushing as they looked from the outside. “I like conflict, especially when it’s direct,” he says. “I like someone who stabs you in the gut. Literally as it was happening, I was thinking, ‘This is cool.’”

The show died, but Begala endures, a television stalwart for a decade now. The TV landscape has changed since, with more analysts and viewpoints popping up, more cable networks making clear their ideological leanings, and ever more shows experimenting with different presentation styles.

Here is what CNN’s Begala, Fox News’ Arthel Neville, MSNBC regular Mark McKinnon, and free-roamers Marjorie Clifton and Karen Tumulty see around them—for better and for worse—as they make the television rounds.

Paul Begala

CNN. BA ’83, JD ’90, Life Member

See me on: Anderson Cooper, John King, and the Situation Room.

How I’d describe myself: I’m there like a former football coach is in the booth. The bad is I’m not trained to be neutral. As long as the audience knows that, that’s fine. The good is I have experience and access that a journalist doesn’t have.

My special ingredients: I try hard to make things interesting and funny. I do have access that journalists don’t, and I can’t betray that. At the same time, I can pick up vibes that other people might not get.

My launchpad: The University of Texas. We resurrected student government 30 years ago now, in 1982. The rap was it would breed a bunch of little campus politicos. My answer was, yes! We train junior journalists, junior businessmen, junior everything. That’s how you develop a Jake Pickle or a John Connally.

And then… I set out to change the world, to work for politicians and causes I believed in. Wound up with Clinton, and had a top post in the White House. When it came time to move on from that, MSNBC offered me a job.

My inspiration: Mark Shields. He used to be a Democratic political operative, but he calls them as he sees them. And he’s funny—he could do stand-up.

Not so inspiring: I was working for Bill Clinton in 1992, and we were getting pounded in primaries, and one analyst said Clinton was like a gut-shot Confederate soldier. The Democratic Party would end on our watch, he said. The big risk of punditry is thinking tomorrow will be just like today, but more so.

I’ll remember forever: The night that Barack Obama was elected. I’d been for Hillary in the primaries. But I was thinking of Barbara Jordan speaking in the ’70s about how her faith in the Constitution was limitless. It was extraordinary to see hundreds of thousands of people weeping openly in Grant Park.

How I prep: I have a broad media palate. I read the Holy Bible and watch Fox News so that I know what both sides are thinking.

Green room confidential: Michele Bachmann was on CNN one time, and I brought my four boys to work with me. Ms. Bachmann showed up to do an interview, and she had her girls. In the green room, she instantly went into mom mode and was so nice to my kids. I don’t agree with anything Michele Bachmann believes in, but I can tell from my exposure to her that she is a good person.

Funniest on-air oops: My buddy [Alex] Castellanos did this. Mrs. Romney talking about Michigan’s mitten shape. ‘I touched the tip of the mitt and the base of the mitt,’ she said. Alex said, ‘Now we know where all those kids came from.’ I thought Anderson Cooper was going to crawl under the desk.

Proudest moment: I am proudest of my strong opposition to the war in Iraq.

What TV gets right: Commentary at its best provides insight at a time of information overload. When it works it brings context, perspective, and a point of view. The basic information—who, what, when, where—is vital. But commentary can tell us how and why, which helps empower us to form our own views.

What I get wrong: Let me focus on my own shortcomings. I tend to be too black-and-white. I place a high premium on humor, but sometimes I wound instead of tweak. And it wouldn’t hurt if I looked more like Matthew McConaughey instead of, as one pundit said, Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein.

Arthel Neville

Fox News. BJ ’86, Life Member

See me on: Fox News. I anchor America’s News Headquarters. I also appear on the O’Reilly Factor most Fridays and fill in on America’s Newsroom and Fox & Friends First.

Call me: Journalist. Broadcaster. Do not call me a pundit—I’m not that.

Doing this since: 1984. I was a junior at UT when I started.

What I bring: Integrity, factual information, honesty, trust. And in a way that’s personable.

UT prep for the public sphere: I was a full-time student and full-time reporter for two years straight. As a cub reporter, my days off were Mondays and Tuesdays—so I went seven days a week. I’ll never forget that.

My model: I never wanted to pattern myself after anyone. But my right-hand mentor was Ed Bradley. He gave me the best advice ever in my career. When I was at KVUE in Austin, I would send those three-quarter-inch tapes to Ed, and he would critique me. I would see the girls at the station anchoring. He said, ‘No, you have the innate ability to be an anchor. You continue to hone your skills as a producer, as a reporter, as a writer, as a storyteller, as an editor.’ That’s why I’m still standing.

Lowlights: I’ve had my moments when I worked in a situation when I’ve thought, ‘This is not why I got into this.’ I don’t want to be around people who are lazy or lack scruples or just want to showboat on television.

Proudest of: Just in general I’m happy to have the perspective of being an African-American woman doing this on a major level. But specifically, I covered Hurricane Katrina. I’m from New Orleans. That was the most difficult assignment in my career. Because as a journalist, you’re not the story. But doggone it, I was the story. My home was soaked in water for two weeks. Everything that is me drowned in Katrina.

DIY prep: We have great makeup artists and hairstylists at Fox, but I am known to do my own. I can do my makeup in 30 minutes and my hair in about 15. It’s rare. But I like doing it because I don’t have to sit in the chair too long.

Backstage surprise: This past Saturday, as I finished all my preparation in terms of reading, I threw on the music in my office and started dancing to get myself all excited about my job.

Biggest drag: It’s a visual medium and I’m female, so having to work out and be mindful of how I eat. That part’s no fun. But I do not starve myself, for the record. I just eat healthy.

Best perk: I love what I do and am happy enough to still be doing it. That right there is perk enough for me.

O’Reilly Confidential: I find him to be a kind-hearted, hardworking guy. He’s family-oriented, a good dad, and if he’s your friend, he’s a good friend. He’s intense with me, too, but I just give it back to him, and I don’t take it personally.

TV analysis gives us: Well, it gives people food for thought. It definitely changes the game—politicians have to always be on their toes because eyes are everywhere.

Get the distinction: Our job as journalists is to report the news. Now if you want to tune into the analysis and opinion shows, you know going in that that is opinion. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you’re going there to hear different points of view. Don’t be confused.

Marjorie Clifton

CNN, Fox News, and beyond. BS ’02

See me on: CNN and Fox. Early Start, Hannity, Lou Dobbs. I go full circle.

I’d call myself: An analyst. And I’m officially a political independent.

Been doing this since: It’s really only this year that I started doing on-air camera punditry. What has been a consistent thing through my entire career is training women in media. The camera got turned on me.

What I bring to the table: A woman’s perspective. There is still a huge disparity in terms of guests and commentators.

How I got started: I was a broadcast journalism major at UT. I left that to go to advertising and marketing because I was so turned off by the idea of having to sell media. What I’ve learned and what I’m trying to do is to play the game so you can get in and change it. I always get pushed to be a Republican or Democrat, because that’s what sells. I try to represent both sides in a fair way that’s promoting dialogue instead of polarity.

How UT helped: I came out of a private all-girls school in Houston. The diversity of UT gave me a broader perspective.

TV that inspires me: In terms of gumption and guts, Rachel Maddow has created a new space for women in humor and sarcasm. She infiltrated the boys club in a way that I don’t think any other woman has. Fareed Zakaria is very balanced, and his work is research-based. He pushes outside the normal political drivel and focuses us on having a more global perspective.

My favorite moment: Recently debating this birth control issue. Never before has my voice felt more important because of the lack of women out there speaking about it. It required me to bring a bigger part of myself into it than I’d ever had before as a woman and a Catholic.

Quote I’m proudest of: ‘Gentlemen, don’t stop opening doors—just don’t forget the doors to the newsroom and the boardroom.’

The real deal on prep: It means having to stay current on what’s happening, up to date on what other people are saying, and doing the necessary research on a given issue. I do two or three hours the night before of general prep. Then they’ll email me the topics at 6 a.m. and I’ll prep until I’m on the air at 9.

Backstage secrets: People don’t realize how much time you’re spending sitting in a meat locker trying to talk to a black box and appear animated and engaged. They keep it subzero in there. I have to wear a layer of wool stockings or I’d be shivering on camera.

A swing and a miss: After a really tough debate at CNN, I came out really proud that I’d come through an early morning coherent and looking alive—and then slammed right into a glass door. I looked down and saw Dunkin Donuts coffee and was so excited, and then, wham.

Drags of the job: The drag-queen makeup you wear out of the studio. It freaks people out sometimes. But the worst part is you always had something else that you wanted to get in.

And perks: My favorite is when you can get somebody to agree with you that you’d never thought would agree.

Commentary’s contributions to democracy: Here’s the thing—it’s an opportunity to change hearts and minds. The most effective people on TV force you to think outside your comfort zone.

What TV could do better: Hire more women executives so issues are represented more equally.

Mark McKinnon

MSNBC and More. ’97

See me on: Various television platforms. I am a regular on Morning Joe on MSNBC.

What I call myself: Pundit doesn’t seem serious. Analyst seems too serious. I generally just refer to myself as a media guy.

What I bring to the table: I try to bring a common sense, middle-of-the-road perspective.  I am not a hyper-partisan.  I worked 15 years for Democrats and 15 years for Republicans, so I understand all perspectives.  I also started an organization called No Labels, which seeks to bring people from all sides together in an effort to make Washington work.

How I started I volunteered for Lloyd Doggett’s U.S. Senate race in 1984.

How UT launched me: My first campaign was for Daily Texan editor in 1980. As editor of the Texan, I represented student views both in the paper and in public forums.

My model: Charlie Rose is terrific. He’s got great guests and a longer format that allows for serious discussion on important issues.

Lowlight: I don’t want to name names, because I still have to work for their network, but I was on a show and when we went to a break the host said, ‘Cut the bipartisan crap, McKinnon. Just give me some red meat.’

Favorite moment: Had some fun last week when I showed up on Morning Joe with a beard.  And they cut to a shot of me side-by-side with the guy from the Dos Equis campaign. ‘Stay Thirsty, My Friends.’

Proudest of: I’m happy just to get through any show without totally humiliating myself.  I usually sign off by saying, ‘Kick it hard and carry on, regardless.’

My preparation strategy: Often I don’t get much advance notice. But I always try and think of at least a few things that I want to get into the conversation. Otherwise, you are totally at the mercy of the interviewer.

What goes on backstage: People would be surprised by how friendly it can be behind the scenes between harsh partisans who then get on camera and tear each other apart.

Kudos: Cable TV provides an astonishingly vast array of opinions and ideas. There is something for everyone.

Constructive criticism: Increasingly, in an effort to attract niche audiences, cable TV is pushing further and further to extremes. It would be good for all outlets to work diligently to make certain they are providing a balanced perspective.

Karen Tumulty

The Washington Post and Elsewhere. BJ ’77.

See me on: Washington Week, Face the Nation, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, Red Eye on Fox.

I am… Basically a reporter. Everything I deal with, whether it’s the stories I write for the newspaper, Twitter, or programs I do on TV, really does grow out of my body of work, which is reporting.

What I offer: There’s a real value to having watched the political and governing process for as many years as I have. It gives me the ability to take a look at what’s going on now and get a sense of what it means.

Doing this since: The television stuff starting in the mid-’90s. The Clinton impeachment coincided with an explosion in cable news. TIME, where I was before the Post, was very eager to see us on the air.

Getting my start: Part of it is really just doing it. There’s no substitute for that. TIME put us through media training as well.

How UT helped: The business was so different when I was in school in the late ’70s. It was very much a print-focused curriculum. But the writing and analysis skills translate pretty easily.

The trick: The thing you have to be willing to do is say, ‘I don’t know.’ There are things you can’t predict or can’t know, but there is a great deal of pressure to act like you know things.

My inspiration: I so admire Gwen Ifill. On her show, she will only have real reporters. You have to have covered the actual thing you’re talking about. Nobody can be an expert on everything. Gwen has a way of keeping people on point and to the facts.

Most discouraging moment: I was once on with a so-called analyst at Fox News who was asked about something going on on the Democratic side of the ledger. She said, ‘I don’t follow Democrats, I only follow Republicans.’

Favorite on-air moment: One of the most thrilling things I’ve done is moderate one of the Republican presidential debates at Dartmouth.

Backstage surprise: People who fight on the air generally like each other off the air.

What commentary contributes to democracy: It gives us immediacy. People invest a lot in it.

What TV could do better: It could always use additional depth, but just an acknowledgment that some things are unknowable. That’s my problem increasingly on the cable channels—an acknowledgment that there’s any validity to some other point of view.

Fellow alumni and friends of the University:

We need to bring your attention to an important issue regarding the future of The University of Texas. The UT System Board of Regents needs to hear right now that you strongly stand behind President William Powers and the job he has done leading the University.

Paul Burka of Texas Monthly magazine is reporting on his blog that the Regents are planning to fire President Powers for expressing his disappointment after the Regents rejected a tuition increase. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of tuition, the President needs to be able to make his careful recommendation about what’s best for the University, and to make that case as strongly and articulately as he can, even if he and the Regents disagree.

Now is no time for instability. We call on the Regents to disavow the published rumor that the leadership of its flagship risks being punished or fired for voicing respectful, measured dissent. Even rumors, when left in play without confirmation or comment, can lead to instability. And instability is a great enemy of achievement.

UT stands poised to make major progress toward becoming the premier public teaching and research university in the country. In just the last few months, UT has hired two outstanding deans and taken a huge step toward establishing a medical school in Austin. Throughout his six years at the helm, President Powers and the University have built on a long tradition of excellence. We do not want to see that progress jeopardized, nor the removal of a president who has been so successful at furthering UT’s mission. The UT System employs world-class professionals to run its universities; they should not be fired simply for voicing disagreement with Board decisions.

You may have already seen or heard about the enormous outpouring of support for President Powers, either through press reports or the incredible social-media response from students. They stand with their leader. We strongly encourage you to do the same.

Contact the Board of Regents, and tell them you support stability at The University of Texas. Tell them you support advancing its mission and its leadership. Tell them you think that, as the governing body, they should receive—and even welcome—the unvarnished views of professional educators, like President Powers.

The core purpose of the Texas Exes is to champion our University. I invite you to join us and become a UT Advocate. Now it is more important than ever for you to make your voice heard. The future of your University depends on it.

To contact the Board of Regents:

By phone: (512) 499-4402
By email: bor@utsystem.edu
By mail: Ashbel Smith Hall, Suite 820 201 West 7th Street Austin, Texas 78701

Machree Gibson is the president of the Texas Exes.

Less than 24 hours after rumors started swirling about his future at UT-Austin, President Bill Powers is speaking out.

Last night a blog post reported that UT System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa had been asked by the board of regents to fire Powers. Cigarroa today denied that the regents’ chairman had ever asked him to fire anyone.

In a late-afternoon statement, Powers expressed his love of UT, thanked the Longhorn family for its support, and called it “an honor” to serve as UT’s president.

He added: “I will continue to work with the entire UT community to move the university forward. At this moment, I am focused on the more than 7,000 students who will graduate next week and make immeasurable contributions to society—extending the university’s legacy of excellence and our positive impact on Texas.”

Meanwhile, the writer who started it all—senior political sage Paul Burka of Texas Monthly—stood by his story and by the integrity of his unnamed source. “My source is highly credible and, subsequent to the chancellor’s statement, continued to stand behind the information,” he wrote in an update to his original post.

Powers assumed leadership of UT-Austin in February 2006.

Students started a virtual rally around Powers via social media overnight, with the “I Stand With Bill Powers” Facebook page verging near 10,000 members at last count.

Today the Faculty Council called a special meeting for Monday to consider a resolution supporting Powers and his administrative team. Council chairman Alan Friedman said the tuition increase Powers had called for was “modest.”

“Yet he was pressured to withdraw the proposal, and when, unlike the president at Texas A&M, he refused because he thought it was crucial to the life of the institution to maintain educational quality to the extent he could, the proposal was nonetheless rejected,” Friedman wrote. “…The fact that the regents ultimately rejected the proposal diminishes neither the campus’s need for such financial support nor the efforts made to attain it.”

Photo by Spencer Selvidge.

So it’s been for the Longhorn community in the last 18 hours after one anonymous source told a journalist their leader’s job could be in jeopardy.

Texas Monthly‘s Paul Burka reported that a source told him UT-Austin president Bill Powers was in danger of being fired by the UT System board of regents. Powers had expressed disappointment last week after regents voted against allowing UT-Austin to raise tuition since its funding had been cut.

Within hours, social media—led in great part by students—swung into action. Memes sprouted, #SaveBillPowers trended on Twitter, and an “I Stand With Bill Powers” Facebook page snagged more than 9,600 supporters.

This morning, UT System chancellor Francisco Cigarroa denied the rumors.”The chairman of the board of regents has never directed me to fire anyone,” he said in a statement.

Here’s how the public reaction is playing out.

UT Fans Rally to #SaveBillPowers

With reporting by Tim Taliaferro