A $2 million donation from ConocoPhillips Alaska to the Ted Stevens Foundation will help create the Alaska Leaders Archive at the UAA/APU Consortium Library, the University of Alaska Anchorage announced this week.
The Alaska Leaders Archive project was launched in 2023 with the gift of the records of the late Sen. Ted Stevens to UAA by the Ted Stevens Foundation. The Stevens collection is one of the largest congressional archives in history, documenting the transition of Alaska from a territory to a state and the important legislative accomplishments of Stevens during his 4 decades in the Senate. His work shaped policy in ways that continue to impact the state and the nation today. At the time he left office, Stevens was the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator in history.
“We are excited to partner with the Ted Stevens Foundation as a lead donor to preserve and share our state’s history through the Alaska Leaders Archive,” said ConocoPhillips Alaska President Erec Isaacson. “This is an opportunity to equip future generations of Alaskans with the historical foundation to understand the challenges, triumphs, and lessons of those who came before them. ConocoPhillips Alaska is proud to be part of this significant project, which will empower future leaders and ensure that Alaska’s rich history is preserved for years to come.”
The collection showcases Stevens’ commitment to key issues in Alaska and the nation, including energy, education, healthcare, communications, Indigenous rights for Alaska Natives, amateur sports, Title IX, infrastructure, military, the Arctic, and much more.
The Stevens collection will serve as the cornerstone of the Alaska Leaders Archive, which includes historical collections totaling more than 7,000 boxes from more than 130 Alaska leaders, elected officials, and community figures.
“The Alaska Leaders Archive will provide a window into the leadership and decision making that shaped Alaska’s history,” said UAA Chancellor Sean Parnell, who was governor of Alaska when Stevens tragically died in a plane crash. “Their legacy has a great deal to teach our students and future generations of Arctic leaders.”
In collaboration with the Ted Stevens Foundation, UAA plans to renovate and expand the UAA/APU Consortium Library to house the Alaska Leaders Archive.
“Senator Stevens was a strong believer that challenges could only be solved by bringing different voices and perspectives together. The Alaska Leaders Archive brings together the rich history of that collaboration and we hope it encourages leadership in the same spirit,” said Lily Becker, daughter of Sen. Stevens, who is president of the Ted Stevens Foundation.
The creation of the Alaska Leaders Archive will involve multi-phase construction and renovation at the UAA/APU Consortium Library. The completed project will include the addition of state-of-the-art archival facilities, a teaching area, and space to display items from these important collections.
Stevens served for six decades in the public sector, starting with his service in World War II as a U.S. Army pilot, flying C-46 and C-47 transport planes in the Pacific Theatre. In the 1950s, he moved to Fairbanks to practice law and was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1956, he worked in the Eisenhower Interior Department, where he became the senior counsel and solicitor. He is credited for his role in winning over Eisenhower to the idea of statehood for Alaska. He was elected a state representative in 1964 and elected to the U.S. Senate in 1968.
Stevens survived a witch hunt by a weaponized Department of Justice. Because of the devious actions of prosecutors who hid exculpatory evidence, he was convicted just days before the 2008 election, which he lost. He was later exonerated, and the prosecutors were publicly called out for their reckless professional misconduct, but they were never fired from the Department of Justice for their misdeeds. Stevens died in a plane crash Aug. 9, 2010 in Western Alaska.
Wasteful spending
Yep! The oil company thinks that is a good thing……. No it isn’t. Wasteful because as usual, Alaska has the scraps of anything the Senators throw at the people of the state. The valuable paper trail and documents are in the National Records of the United States. Everything sent to Alaska is junk that a widow didn’t know what to do with. Trash all of it. Do not spend a dime on notes and stickies or drafts. Dumb Dunleavy and former attorney for the oil company, Parnell want you to believe they have the real records. No, the widow and Murkowski pulled a fast one on all of the people of the state and Dunleavy stands by dumb stuff as usual. Real records of the government cannot be removed by anyone to fake the scheme such as was sent to the UAA and Dunleavy gifted millions more out of our budget to store. Ponzi scheme of the highest level. Parnell should be fired ! Dunleavy should be recalled for poor management of the state’s funds and the oil companies’ money needs a better track record than what they have internally.
The Honorable Senator Ted Steven’s from the great state of Alaska, Defense spending, pro-choice, Magnuson Stevens act, pro oil and Wrong Mine Wrong Place on pebble.
Got news for you Skippy. To confused Marxists, every mine is the wrong mine in the wrong place. And every one of us is pro-oil unless we are living a truly pre-Victorian lifestyle–which we know you don’t, as proven by the fact you’re even commenting on here.
Skippy; Kensington, Greens Creek, Argaunaut and Pogo mines are all in the right place.
Your exclusive opinion does not address my point. Why did Kensington have to go to the US Supreme Court to shake off the enviro-nazi’s lawsuits? Similar resistance happened at all the other mines you mentioned. It even rears its ugly head at every permit renewal or modification. The Marxist enviro-nazis are relentless. Pebble would be just fine; it only suffers from hyperbolic, extremist, opposition.
Trump said no on pebble! In fact the vast majority of Alaskans said no to the security’s fraud convicted pebble Ltd.
Can you link an account of Senator Steven’s prosecution from a reliable source? I’m still confused about the actual allegations, and how the case played out.
This addition to the library is outstanding! Thank you ConocoPhillips.
Veco gave him a free basement.
As said in this article, its a proven fact the US Department of Justice has been corrupt since at least 2007. Even after being exposed they doubled-down by totally ignoring it. God only knows how long the Marxist corruption has been embedded. Even today, they did whatever it took to keep Matt Gaetz away. All we have left is prayers for reform.
One of the criminal DOJ prosecutor’s committed suicide not long after the Steven’s conviction. Sydney Powell has an excellent detailed book on the entire escapade.
Fortunately, we have Donald J. TRUMP to help clean out the entire DOJ criminal enterprise. How many more dirty prosecutors will fall on their own swords? Suicide watch.
Spot on Chrissy
The evil drones working at the FBI as well as DOJ were all in on the political sham against him at the time.
I feel as though it was done simply because of his extremely long standing record of being the best at serving Alaskans and that in itself ruffled many feathers who were not as fortunate to have such a powerful leader.
Alvin Bragg/Leticia James is another example of corruption with prosecutorial powers that use their office to settle their personal hate on innocent individuals.
Their day will come.
Agree with Andy. Stevens was a giant in DC. But part of the problem, as many saw it, was that he stayed in DC too long, accumulating massive political power as Chairman of Senate Appropriations. The power of the purse…….turned into his own curse.
I only had one basic business course in college. It was all that was required in my field of study. It was called Business and Organization. One of the foundations of any business is how it contributes to the welfare of citizens in its business location. I hope this investment in goodwill by Conoco-Phillips is helpful to the citizens of Alaska considering how much pork-barrel and necessary spending Ted Stevens secured for his electorate in his many years in Senate.
The majority of comments don’t appear to be on point. There’s actually rather a lot to unpack here. A decade ago, the Stevens archive was housed at the Rasmuson Library at UAF and their staff were busy with efforts to make materials useful to members of the public. Around 2015 or so, that arrangement suddenly ended and the materials were shipped to storage in Anchorage. While questions were asked, I don’t recall ever hearing plausible answers. Was the proposed archive at UAA just recently conceived? UAF has the space to build such a facility, just not within the footprint of Rasmuson or within close proximity.
Were there concerns about what materials could be accessed, who could access them and what stories could be told as a result? This is the big thing to me. We have local historians in Alaska dedicated to selling a warm and fuzzy James Wickersham to tourists. This involves excluding Evangeline Atwood’s biography from the resources one can browse, among other sources. Anyone who has studied Wickersham for more than ten minutes should know that his activities in the first three decades of the 20th century were anything but “warm and fuzzy”. Atwood, Bob DeArmond, Claus Naske and other lesser-known authors provided their readers with a frank look at several generations of Alaska leaders, especially Bob Bartlett, Bill Egan, Ernest Gruening and others of that specific era. Biographies of Alaskan notables of more recent generations are noticeably the product of friendly authors or otherwise sanitized. Take one look at the state of “biographies” of Alaskan notables on Wikipedia and you can see the direction our knowledge base is taking. Is the Stevens family afraid of someone researching a potentially uncomplimentary work and wishes to control the narrative? It sure seemed to me that it happened in fairly recent history when Bob Atwood and John Strohmeyer split over Atwood’s biography.
How about copyright? The Ted Stevens Foundation posts a lot of stuff to social media without specific attribution. The overwhelming majority of creative works authored by officers or employees of the federal government are in the public domain. The implication from the social media posts is that the Foundation claims copyright to materials that were never under copyright to begin with, which would be the case with anything authored by an officer or employee of the Senate. We’ve already seen the Alaska Railroad claim copyright to photographic archive materials that originated with its federal predecessor entities. With the federal government in general, the military and many executive branch agencies are very meticulous when it comes to attribution. Congress doesn’t appear to play by those same rules.
Also, Consortium underwent a major expansion and renovation not that many years ago. It began with funding secured during my father’s sole term in the House; because of his election, UAA was represented by a legislator in the majority, something that was otherwise rare in those days. The expansion resulted in the library building incorporating ARLIS. ARLIS began decades ago when the BLM started a reference library in the Federal Building. After a while, it wasn’t very useful when the public could no longer freely access the Federal Building, and it also wasn’t useful in rented space in a random location (the same space the Anchorage Daily News occupies today, if I remember correctly). Having that facility at Consortium is a great improvement. The library also hosts other specialized collections besides what is held by the archives section. I don’t see how this is anything different except for size and scope.
From: “Is Alaska Statehood a Fraud?”
Find it online.
“A thoughtful observer must sit back and look at the situation that
only time can provide, as if it were a painting that cannot be properly viewed until one
steps back a certain distance: Ted Stevens, author (or likely co-author) of much of the
statehood act … who refused to battle ANILCA … and then came to “rescue” Alaska
with titanic influxes of federal monies in order to prop up the economy … bringing
Alaska under the dependency and control of the federal government … which is precisely
what Gruening wanted to free the new state from in his historic American Colonialism
speech … and Stevens touted as Alaska’s “Man of the Century.”
Stevens ADMITTED that he authored much of the statehood act illegally while in the Interior Dept in DC.