Alan J. Borsuk – Page 123 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Down to Earth Advice from a Lofty Diplomatic Perch

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:March 3, 2010
Post category:International Law & Diplomacy Speakers at Marquette

Being an American ambassador can be a pretty surreal experience, but it can lead to some real advice for people considering careers in international business law.

Rick Graber, a prominent Milwaukee lawyer and Republican leader, was ambassador to the Czech Republic for the last two and a half years of President George W. Bush’s administration. He described his experiences as ambassador and gave advice during a recent hour with about 25 students in Profossor Irene Calboli’s International Business Transactions course at the Law School.

Graber called the lifestyle of an ambassador unimaginable – a spectacular 60,000-square-foot house and eight to ten people to run the house. “You’d take your shirt off in the evening and, magically, it would be clean in the morning,” he said. “That doesn’t happen much in Shorewood.”

Graber described the two major issues that occupied him during his time in the Czech Republic.

Bad Omens for Wisconsin in the Race to the Top

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:March 2, 2010
Post category:Education & Law Milwaukee Public Schools

The U.S. Department of Education is expected to announce by the end of this week the finalists for the Race to the Top grants that have been dominating national talk about education lately. Forty states, plus the District of Columbia, put in proposals to get some of the huge pie of $4.35 billion to be awarded for the what federal officials conclude are the most potent proposals for raising achievement in schools and cities where results until now have been poor.

Don’t expect Wisconsin to be among those tapped to move into the next stage of the first round of grants.

At least two national bloggers who keep eyes on the process made predictions this week on who will stay in the running, and neither picked Wisconsin. Bloggers on the widely-read Education Week Web page picked Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Illinois, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Delaware, Indiana, Minnesota, and Colorado as finalists, and projected Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Tennessee, as the states that would get first round grants that could run to $100 million or more.

Thomas W. Carroll, who blogs for the City Journal Web site, picked seven states as the most likely to win shares of the Race to the Top money. They are Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Colorado, Georgia, Delaware and Michigan.

There will be a second round of grants later this year, but Wisconsin is not likely to be in the center of contention then either, unless something happens that makes the state’s proposal appear like it’s going to change the status quo in more dramatic ways than the current proposal suggests.

A Public Service Environment

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:March 1, 2010
Post category:Marquette Law School Milwaukee

When I was hired by the Law School in October, I joked that my basketball affections were for sale – Go, Golden Eagles – but, especially when I was writing in my own reporting voice, I didn’t expect to change my journalistic standards (there really are such things) after more than 35 years of newspapering in Milwaukee. So if you want to consider this hopeless pandering to my bosses, I can’t stop you. But I regard this as just a blog item in my voice.

The annual Law School Public Service Conference was this past Friday at the Alumni Memorial Union, with a theme of “Water and People.” It’s one of the centerpieces of the Law School’s involvement in public issues and its commitment to promoting knowledge of and involvement in those issues.

But I’ve been impressed in the four months I’ve been hanging around the building with how strong the public service environment is in the Law School and with how little of the reason for saying this is rooted in once-a-year events. Consider a partial list: