On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a Harvard and University of North Carolina policy of considering a student’s race when accepting applications. We talk with Anuj Desai, a UW-Madison Law professor, about what the ruling means for Wisconsin’s public and private universities.
Colleges and universities can no longer consider race when admitting prospective students following a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the use of race-conscious admissions. In Wisconsin, the decision was applauded by conservative activists and left the University of Wisconsin System reviewing potential effects from the ruling.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the consideration of race in college admissions, a ruling that may complicate how Wisconsin’s most competitive universities recruit diverse student bodies.
Evers previously said he would not sign a state budget that includes tax cuts for wealthy residents or maintains a $32 million cut to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the UW System.
Both measures were included in the budget passed Thursday, but Evers has since softened his position and signaled he could support the UW provision because Republicans on the budget-writing committee included a companion provision that allows UW officials to request for the funding to be restored if the committee approves their plans for it.
In Wisconsin, the decision will likely have the largest effect on the University of Wisconsin System’s most selective campus, UW-Madison. While the school has long struggled to attract students of color, it recently ushered in its most diverse freshman class in the institution’s history. About one-third of last fall’s freshmen, or 2,695 total, identified as students of color.
In 2013, IceCube detected the first cosmic neutrinos. In the years since, they’ve been able to narrow neutrino sources down to individual galaxies. “We have been detecting extragalactic neutrinos for 10 years now,” says Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin and a member of the IceCube collaboration.
“We now hope to have established the multi-messenger techniques that will allow us to pinpoint the cosmic ray sources in the galaxy which, arguably, represents one of the oldest problems in astronomy,” Francis Halzen, IceCube principal investigator and physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, tells Inverse.
“It took us 10 years to find the galactic plane in neutrinos,” says IceCube head Francis Halzen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It’s totally counterintuitive. It’s like if you went outside at night and saw a sky bright in active, distant galaxies but no Milky Way.”
IceCube had already definitively detected neutrinos streaming in from outside the Milky Way, but it couldn’t be said with certainty that any of them came from within the galaxy, says Francis Halzen, lead investigator of the project and a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This was rather strange, considering the proximity of the Milky Way’s disk (in fact, our solar system is embedded in it) and the high likelihood that neutrinos form there.
Professor of Political Science Emeritus at UW-Madison Howard Schweber referred to Thursday’s decision as a ‘sweeping giant statement principle.’ But he says an exception is equally notable.
“The giant loophole comes quite close to the end of the opinion when Chief Justice Roberts says ‘of course, a college or university may still continue race as it applies to a particular student’s individual life story described in their application essay.’ So what really happened here is a shift from one way to think about it is a shift from race consciousness in admissions to race consciousness in application,” Dr. Schweber said.
At the University of Wisconsin Madison, where the acceptance rate is about 60 percent, the admissions website states that the school’s holistic application process is designed to help identify “remarkable students” and “diversity in personal background and experience” and does not use “formulas or charts.”
Despite Evers’ recent call for the Legislature to make significant changes to the budget to ensure that he signs it into law, neither chamber this week made substantive changes to the document before passing it. He opposed the significant tax cut for the wealthiest Wisconsinites as well as the proposed cuts to the UW System’s diversity programs. Both remain in the proposal.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ended a Harvard and University of North Carolina policy of considering a student’s race when accepting applications. We talk with a UW-Madison Law professor about what the ruling means for Wisconsin’s public and private universities.
Thursday’s ruling struck down the longstanding use of race in admissions practices, as the Supreme Court considered two cases brought by conservative legal action group Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The lawsuits argued the schools discriminated against applicants of Asian heritage, and UNC additionally discriminated against white applicants, as part of its admissions policy.
Under a Republican-led bill, Wisconsin high schoolers who graduate in the top 5% of their class would receive automatic admission to University of Wisconsin System schools, including UW-Madison.
It’s a seemingly simple decision, but UW-Madison political science professor Howard Schweber says the repercussions are a lot more complicated.
For one UW-Madison alum, the return of a chair has absolved 31 years of guilt.
The budget does not include state funds for a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus, a top priority for the university. A new building would replace the College of Engineering’s 83-year-old facility, adding over 1,000 engineering students per year.
Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the University of Wisconsin’s $32 million cut, funding that Republicans identified as going toward diversity, equity, or DEI, programming and staff. But the budget would allow for the university to get the funding later if it could show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.
Afederal judge on Thursday ordered that a former UW-Madison graduate student charged with making threats against people at the university be hospitalized for mental health treatment until he’s deemed competent enough to assist in his own defense.
Rishelle Eithun, with UW Health Kids, says American Family Children’s Hospital sees fireworks-related injuries every July— including burns, loss of fingers or limbs, and other serious trauma. She says sparklers are especially dangerous for children younger than five.
UW Health revealed Wednesday that Carbone Cancer Center was included in Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Best Cancer Hospitals 2023. It was ranked highest in Wisconsin and #30 in the nation.
J.J. Watt is back in the NFL, but this time at the analyst desk.
The Pewaukee native and former University of Wisconsin defensive end announced on Twitter Thursday that he’ll be joining CBS Sports as an NFL studio analyst this fall on a multiyear deal.
Guest column: But perhaps the worst part of the proposal is the Republican plan to cut UW System funding using the pretext that campuses must eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.
Letter to the editor: One who has already been indoctrinated wouldn’t see the indoctrination for what it is.
Letter to the editor: Since 1988, I have mentored many hundreds of students, had a great scientific and professional career and gotten to know many other Latino Ph.D. graduates in STEM. We know Albert(a) Einstein can be anywhere, if welcomed and given a chance, and diversity at UW is how valuable careers begin.
Christine Whelan, clinical professor of Consumer Science at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says an individual’s work ethic is at the core of what it means to be an American. You demonstrate to other people you are pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and are busy, indicating a sense of success. “Affluence and busyness seem to go together as status symbols,” Whelan said in a telephone interview. “It is easy to criticize it, but the culture demands it from us. We need to be careful about individual actions versus cultural norms.”
Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at UW-Madison, wouldn’t say that Dane County has made true progress in the last decade in terms of how people of color experience mortgage and rent cost burdens compared to their white counterparts.
It’s more like “slightly less bad but measured from a very bad starting point,” he said.
“The Senate’s attempt to initiate a confirmation hearing for Wolfe does seem to rest on very shaky legal ground,” UW-Madison Law School associate professor Robert Yablon said.
“When the commission met earlier this week, only three of members voted to re-appoint Wolfe,” Yablon said. “Notably, after this vote, the commission didn’t take the position that it had successfully reappointed her. It’s odd for the Senate to claim there’s been an appointment that the commission itself didn’t purport to make.”
