10:40 a.m., the Muhammad Ali Center. CEO Donald Lassere is visible on a TV cameraman’s video monitor as he tells a press conference the UPS Foundation has donated $500,000 to the museum honoring the Louisville native.
The gift will fund the center’s education initiatives, including UCrew, Generation Ali, its Character Education Program “Creating Our Future,” and the Muhammad Ali Center Council of Students. More about the Ali Center.
The UPS Foundation is the charitable arm of the shipping giant, which has 22,000 workers in Louisville — the city’s single-biggest employer. More about UPS and about its foundation.
Mayor Greg Fischer was there, too. But one of the most important people present — maybe the most important — wasn’t publicly acknowledged at all: Brown-Forman heiress Ina Brown Bond, one of the Ali Center’s main movers.
The 10-year-old museum downtown said the contribution will “continue the special legacy of the late, great Muhammad Ali.”
The Muhammad Ali Center will announce the gift and introduce the donor at a 10:30 a.m. press conference at the 144 N. Sixth St. museum. CEO Donald Lassere and Mayor Greg Fischer will be there.
The Louisville native, prize fighter and humanitarian died June 3 in Phoenix, his primary home, after battling Parkinson’s disease for decades. He was 74. Ali was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery a week later amid a celebrity-studded memorial service.
The $80 million Ali museum has struggled at times, with frequent top staff changes, occasional budget issues, and facility setbacks that included long delays in opening an adjoining plaza and a pedway connection to the Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere, The Courier-Journal said in advance of the center’s 10th anniversary in November.
Dress for success, and failure: Lawrence (left) and Holmes.
Boulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:
Multiple offers are already on the table for the drama starring Jennifer Lawrence, about controversial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes. And that’s even before a round of pitches Monday as director Adam McKay nears a final decision, according to Deadline.
The Hollywood trade publication revealed only last week that Lawrence and McKay would be teaming on the project, and a package of background materials was sent to numerous buyers just yesterday morning.
The sizzling competition among producers is hardly surprising. Lawrence, 25, is Hollywood’s most bankable star, and McKay won an Oscar this year for co-writing and directing another hot-button film, The Big Short.
Deadline’s got the background:
Holmes, 32, launched Theranos in 2003, with claims it could test blood with only a pinprick vs. the traditional method of drawing blood by injection. That pumped up the company’s valuation to $9 billion as recently as two years ago. The company has since come under investigation over claims of inaccurate testing. And Holmes’ own worth — at one point valued at $4.5 billion for her 50% stake — has fallen to a fraction of that.
Zoo admission is free today — if your name’s Dorothy — to celebrate its oldest resident, “Dot,” the Aldabra tortoise; she’s turning 80 today.
At least, that’s the official explanation, according to WDRB. But amid this weekend’s gay pride festivities, Boulevard observes that “friend of Dorothy” has long been playful code for being gay.
Photo, top: a still from the terrifying scene where the Wicked Witch uses her broom to skywrite a demand that Emerald City turn over a terrified Dorothy Gale in 1939’s classic Wizard of Oz.
Gov. Matt Bevin, asked if he sought James Ramsey’s resignation, said he’d spoken to many people, including the embattled University of Louisville president himself, and the “culmination of all the conversations I’ve had with everybody on all fronts is what I just announced to you,” the Lexington Herald Leader says.
Bevin said today those conversations also included leaders in the higher-education community,” and there is pretty much uniform agreement . . . (that) the board as it exists right now is not particularly functional. Its dysfunction has precluded it from doing what its responsibility is, and that is to be effective fiduciary leaders of the university,” according to The Courier-Journal.
Ramsey, 67, has been president since 2002. He offered his resignation, but it hasn’t been formally accepted, because a new board of trustees hasn’t been formed to replace the one Bevin dismissed today, according to multiple media accounts. The governor said Ramsey’s exit could come in the next two weeks. But state Sen. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat, said Bevin’s firing the board is illegal, the Courier-Journal says.
Ramsey
Bevin issued an executive order this morning that scolded the 20-member board for its “lack of transparency and professionalism” and described the relationship between the U of L administration and trustees as “operationally dysfunctional,” according to WDRB.
The governor appointed a temporary three-person board until a permanent one can be assembled: Junior Bridgeman, a businessman and former U of L basketball player; Bonita Black, a Louisville attorney, and Dr. Ron Wright, said WAVE.
Benz
The board chairman is Larry Benz, a healthcare business owner. He’s been a trustee since July 2011.
Trustee Robert Hughes, the Murray physician who has supported Ramsey, said he learned about Bevin’s plans via social media — echoing statements by other trustees about being in the dark, the Courier-Journal reported).
According to Ramsey’s contract, if he resigns at the request of the board of trustees, he can keep a tenured professor position — for 75% of his most recent base pay as president, which is $350,000, according to WFPL.
Ramsey has been under fire for numerous scandals over the past several years, said WFPL. The NCAA is investigating the basketball program after a former escort alleged an ex-coach paid for strippers and sex for players and recruits. Last October, Ramsey apologized after he and his senior staff posed for a photograph at a university Halloween party wearing stereotypical Mexican garb, the radio station said.
One of the university’s most influential and wealthiest graduates is Humana co-founder David A. Jones Sr., who received a bachelor’s degree in business there in 1954.
Gov. Matt Bevin announced today that University of Louisville President James Ramsey is stepping down and that he is reorganizing the Board of Trustees, according to The Courier Journal.
Bevin said he is appointing an interim board that will serve for the next two weeks. Ramsey is willing to step down immediately, Bevin said, but he could remain as president for as long as two weeks.
Bevin, a Republican elected in November, said it has been evident that changes in the oversight at U of L has been needed for some time. He said his intent is to “give a fresh start” to the university, according to the newspaper.
It is unclear whether there is a precedent for Bevin’s stunning move this morning. But it follows other aggressive steps he’s taken to reshape state government, moves that have roiled higher education and entrenched power players in Frankfort.
The governor’s decision is at least a tacit rebuke of Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat on whose watch Ramsey became a lightning rod for criticism over his seven-figure pay checks and bonuses as well as other administrative problems.
The two men have been engaged in an increasingly nasty war of words, virtually since the first day Bevin took office.
This story is still developing; updates coming. (Boulevard is hamstrung in our reporting because we’re working on a travel story here at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. And we’re working off our iPhone.)
News about business and culture in Louisville, Ky.
The 10-year-old museum downtown 
Multiple offers are already on the table for the drama starring 
Boulevard 