When incoming museum director Amy Gilman first saw “Emancipation Group” on display at the Chazen Museum of Art in 2017, she reacted like many visitors: She stopped in her tracks.
February 6, 2023
Top Stories
Research
PETA takes credit for ending sheep experiments, but UW-Madison cites funding lapse
Earlier this week, animal activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) put out a statement saying its protests had pushed the Navy to nix the partnership with UW-Madison. But it was lack of funding that prompted the university and the Navy to jointly agree to end the experiments, Michelle Ciucci, UW-Madison Animal Program faculty director said.
Higher Education/System
Take UW free speech survey with a grain of salt
Letter to the editor: Nowhere in this article is there any information which would lead me to believe that those who responded — a 12.5% response rate, incentivized with a $10 reward — are necessarily representative of the student population as a whole. If there is such information, let us know, and I will reconsider.
Campus life
In the 608: Winter Carnival returns with brand-new events for 83rd year
From themed ice skating to maple taffy making, the Wisconsin Union’s free wintertime revelry series the Winter Carnival returns for an 83rd year Feb. 6-11, 2023.
UW’s Winter Carnival will be twice as big this year
New events join a giant list of longstanding traditions during Feb. 6-11 festival.
The winter games of the Ojibwe come to UW-Madison
The Ojibwe were not out of place in this land of the Ho-Chunk.
Q&A: UW-Madison Director of Tribal Relations Carla Vigue discusses career, upbringing, plans for the future
Vigue plans to take experience as a public servant to raise awareness about different Indigenous cultures and histories, and further how the university and tribal nations can connect and help each other.
UW-Madison students compete in 2023 Global Game Jam
Students in small groups worked together for 48 hours to develop their own video games for a worldwide competition.
Community
As suicide rate keeps rising in Wisconsin, concentration in rural areas raises alarm
Chris Frakes is the group director of the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program, an anti-poverty agency. Every three years, it does a community needs assessment for the five counties it oversees. In 2017, Frakes had heard so many stories of farmers struggling to get by, she expected them to reach out for help. But few did.
The silence and the growing farm crisis led to the program getting creative about upstream prevention. In 2021, it received nearly $1 million from the Wisconsin Partnership Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to target farmers’ mental health over a five-year period.
Opinion
Opinion | Why I’m not worried about my students using ChatGPT
Lawrence Shapiro is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
ChatGPT has many of my university colleagues shaking in their Birkenstocks. This artificial-intelligence tool excels at producing grammatical and even insightful essays — just what we’re hoping to see from our undergraduates.
UW Experts in the News
Samsung exec says he wouldn’t give a smartphone to his daughter until she was 11
Deciding whether or not a child is ready to own a smartphone should be based on their own development rather than a specific age, according to Megan Morena, a pediatrics professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Northeast U.S. Latest to Experience Polar Vortex Temperatures
“I wish I had a clear answer,” said Steve Vavrus, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin. With Jennifer Francis, now at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, Dr. Vavrus wrote a seminal 2012 paper that presented the idea that Arctic warming was affecting the polar vortex. “Unfortunately the state of things is still ambiguous,” he said.
Madagascar’s sacred trees face existential threats in a changing world
“That’s one of the most amazing things about the Malagasy baobabs,” says Nisa Karimi, a botanist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “One species occurs all across continental Africa, and then you get to Madagascar, and you have six.”
Why Bad Bunny’s Grammy nominated Un Verano Sin Ti is such a big deal
“There was a particular audience consuming this and it was divided along generational lines,” said Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a Caribbean historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is penning an article for the Bad Bunny Enigma, an academic journal analyzing the star. “It’s really interesting how Bad Bunny became this global superstar while in conversation with things that were happening in the archipelago. He was basically making music for people in the archipelago, referencing things that only Puerto Ricans would understand.”
The EPA is updating its most important tool for cracking down on carbon emissions
The EPA uses higher dollar amounts for deaths in higher-income countries and lower dollar amounts for deaths in lower-income countries. Or, as Paul Kelleher, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, puts it…PAUL KELLEHER: The badness of a death from climate change in India is treated as not as bad as exactly the same death if it happened at exactly the same time in the United States.
Our Best Advice For Genuinely Accepting An Apology
“Forgiveness is a special kind of moral virtue that always and without exception occurs when the other person has been unfair to you,” professor of education psychology at the University of Wisconsin Robert Enright tells Vox. “When that person is unfair to you, and you willingly choose to forgive — it’s not forced upon you — you are basically good to the one who was not good to you. You’re deliberately trying to get rid of the resentment and offer goodness of some kind: respect, kindness, anything that is good for the other person.”
The Blurred Lines Between Goldman C.E.O.’s Day Job and His D.J. Gig
“There’s a kind of prima facie appearance of: ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours,’” said Yaron Nili, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in corporate and securities law.
Obituaries
James “Jim” Edward Lawler
Jim received a BS in physics (’73) from Missouri University of Science and Technology and a PhD in physics (’78) from UW Madison. In the two years after earning his doctorate, he was a research associate at Stanford University; he then returned to UW Madison, where he was a professor from 1980-2022 when he retired.
UW-Madison Related
Paul Ryan: Debt ceiling talks will get ‘closer to the wire’
Ryan will be speaking at UW-Madison on February 22nd. His speech will cover some of the topics he seeks to address in his book, including ways to maintain the nation’s social contract.