Japanese Expert Says Good Relations Between Trump and Abe Are A Plus

The personal chemistry between President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is quite good, and that’s especially important given Trump’s unpredictability in what he advocates and how he goes about his advocacy.

That was the view offered Wednesday at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Eckstein Hall by a prominent Japanese expert on the United States, Professor Fumiaki Kubo. He is A. Barton Hepburn Professor of American Government and History in the Graduate Schools of Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo. His visit to Marquette University was facilitated by the Japanese consulate in Chicago.

Kubo said Abe visited Trump at Trump Tower in New York City shortly after the American presidential election in November 2016, and then visited Trump again in Washington and in Florida shortly after Trump took office. The two leaders share an interest in golf and that was a plus, he said.

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Leader Offers Bold Vision for Renewing Historic Harbor Area

Lilith Fowler says she is “a fixer-upper” type of person. That’s true whether she’s dealing with a home or a neighborhood – or big challenges that can have impact on an entire metropolitan area. A few years ago, she was the first executive director of Menomonee Valley Partners, a non-profit that played a valuable role in the revitalization of a big swatch of land near the heart of the city.

She has taken on a new challenge: Catalyzing a boom in the area around Milwaukee’s harbor, about 1,000 acres that is in large part unused or underused now, with many environmental challenges. The area can roughly be described as lying on either side of the southern stretch of the Hoan Bridge. The goal is to bring to the area the kind of appealing development that has come to nearby areas such as the Third Ward and Bay View.

In an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program in the Lubar Center of Eckstein Hall on Thursday, Fowler, executive director of Harbor District, Inc., a new and still-small non-profit, summarized the state of the area now (pretty used up) and offered visions, both in words and slides, of what the area could be (pretty beautiful, with a lot of river walks and promenades, as well as mixed commercial and residential development).

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Don’t Laugh — Millennial Leader Serious About Easing Political Polarization

You didn’t need to go further than the opening moments of the “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program in the Lubar Center at Eckstein Hall on Tuesday to grasp the challenge his guest for the day has taken on.

Gousha was introducing Steven Olikara, founder and president of the Millennial Action Project. “They’re hoping, sort of, to re-establish political cooperation,” Gousha said. That brought an audible snicker from a member of the audience, which brought a larger laugh from the group. “This is a cynical, cynical group,” Gousha said, with a laugh. Olikara responded, “That’s OK, my parents laughed, too.”

But Olikara is serious about it and he exuded confidence that improvement in the tone of American politics will come. 

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