Update on Dan Peterson’s Role at UIUC

A quick update on Dan Peter­son, the “Dan” of the “Dan, Molly and I” advice to Chan­cel­lor Wise not 90 min­utes after Steve Miller’s email to Wise:

Appar­ently Dan was brought to UIUC in order to help with the brave new world of dying state fund­ing, and to aid in bring­ing in pri­vate and cor­po­rate $.  Or so said Phyl­lis Wise in Octo­ber, 2012, months before Peterson’s arrival at UIUC:

It is my plea­sure to announce that Dan Peter­son, who has served in sev­eral senior lead­er­ship posi­tions at three lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, has been named vice chan­cel­lor for insti­tu­tional advance­ment at the Urbana cam­pus of the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois. He also will serve as senior vice pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Foundation.

His chief respon­si­bil­ity will be to bring our cam­pus, the U. of I. Foun­da­tion and the Alumni Asso­ci­a­tion onto a team whose pri­mary pur­pose includes build­ing endur­ing rela­tion­ships with our many con­stituents and gen­er­at­ing diverse resources that fur­ther our learn­ing, dis­cov­ery, and engage­ment excel­lence through the inte­gra­tion of mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, alumni rela­tions and development.

This is a crit­i­cal time for the uni­ver­sity as we move away from the tra­di­tional tax-supported fund­ing model and explore new avenues to sup­port our core edu­ca­tional mis­sions. That makes the office of insti­tu­tional advance­ment, and its lead­er­ship, more impor­tant than ever in set­ting us on a con­tin­ued path of excel­lence. Dan Peter­son is an accom­plished and thought­ful leader, who under­stands the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties we face at Illi­nois and how we can become more effec­tive at build­ing the sup­port that is crit­i­cal to reach­ing an even higher level of accom­plish­ment. As the land­scape for higher edu­ca­tion changes, the Urbana cam­pus is now posi­tioned to sig­nif­i­cantly strengthen phil­an­thropic sup­port for our mission.

…

Mr. Peter­son will play a vital role in lead­ing our efforts to con­tinue build­ing pri­vate and cor­po­rate sup­port for the cam­pus. Please give him a warm Illi­nois wel­come when he arrives Dec. 1 [2012].¹

Given the above, doesn’t it seem more and more likely that, how­ever influ­en­tial Steve Miller and the rest of the Jew­ish donors might have been about Salaita, Dan and Molly and the rest of the UIUC Dona­tions gang had an awful lot to do with how that deci­sion went down?

Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that UIUC had been mak­ing var­i­ous announce­ments over the part­ner­ship with Carle Hos­pi­tal since April — you know, that $100M put from Carle into a project with the uni­ver­sity as it moves away from tax­payer support?

Just say­ing.

1. See Dan Peter­son named new Vice Chan­cel­lor for Insti­tu­tional Advance­ment, announce­ment of 10–12-12 by Chan­cel­lor Wise, avail­able at UIUC Dan Peter­son Joins. [↩]