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September 2, 2025

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Wisconsin’s tiniest livestock — honeybees — are threatened by mites, pesticides and lack of food

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

“Honeybees are like livestock,” Hannah Gaines Day, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies how pollinators interact with the environment and agricultural operations, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “They’re like little, tiny livestock that the beekeeper is taking care of, and so they have someone looking out for them and feeding them and giving them medicine if they need it if they’re sick. But the wild pollinators don’t have that.”

Report warns Trump administration policies are undercutting economy and Wisconsin workers

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

Laura Dresser, a co-author of the report and High Road Strategy Center associate director, said in a statement that the 2025 data shows “some real strengths for working Wisconsin owing to the strong recovery from pandemic shutdowns.”

“Long-standing inequalities are still with us, and federal policy puts substantial clouds on the horizon,” Dresser said. “I’m especially concerned about the administration’s attacks on the integrity of federal economic data.”

Is it OK to write songs with AI? UW-Madison expert says it depends

Posted on
The Cap Times

“I think it is always hard to come down on the side of ‘no, this technology should not be used in this space,’” said Jeremy Morris, a professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I think the more interesting question is ‘how do we use it and how does that come to define the things we listen to?’”

How to divide perennials in fall for bigger blooms next year

Posted on
Parade Home & Garden

Johanna Oosterwyk, manager of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s instructional D.C. Smith Greenhouse, says that in general, fall is a great time for planting divided perennials, since the weather is cooler and there is usually plenty of rain to help plants establish. “This applies to digging up and dividing existing plants as well as planting new ones,” she adds.

Teens come up with trigonometry proof for Pythagorean Theorem, a problem that stumped math world for centuries

Posted on
CBS News

Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied how best to teach African American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.

“Many of our young people have their ceilings lowered, that somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, their thoughts are, ‘I’m not going to be anything special.’ What I think is probably happening at St. Mary’s is young women come in as, perhaps, ninth graders and are told, ‘Here’s what we expect to happen. And here’s how we’re going to help you get there.'”

Research

Workers need a $20 fair wage

Posted on
The Cap Times

Labor Day offers a critical juncture at which to access the condition of workers in Wisconsin. For two decades, the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has produced comprehensive “State of Working Wisconsin” reports, which have set the standard for assessing where we are at.

The 2025 assessment features some concerning news.

Higher Education/System

This former UW Badgers athlete says she encountered ‘toxic’ coaching. Now she’s speaking up.

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Lexi Westley comes from a family of coaches and athletes. But it took what she calls a “terrifying” experience with a coach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to motivate her to pursue coaching herself.

A little more than three years after coach Mackenzie Wartenberger resigned from her position as head coach of the UW-Madison women’s cross country team, Westley and four of her teammates are coming forward about what they call abusive behavior by Wartenberger.

Our view: UW athletes deserve better than abuse

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Badgers fans love to win. But more important than any championship are the lives and wellbeing of the student athletes in red and white. They face enormous pressure to succeed in their sports, often with scholarships and additional compensation at stake.

That’s what makes the State Journal’s recent investigation into the women’s cross country and basketball teams so troubling. Winning, or trying to, trumped the best interests of students.

Madison says GPA determines who gets automatic admission to UW, regardless of number of students

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

More Madison School District students could be eligible for automatic admission to the Universities of Wisconsin under a district policy that avoids having to break ties among top-ranked students.

The district says its approach the new Wisconsin Guarantee program complies with the law that created it, while the primary author of the law said neither her bill nor the law addresses Madison’s approach and it would take a court challenge to determine whether it is legal.

These Trump voters back his immigration crackdown, but some worry about his methods

Posted on
Reuters

Other voters, such as Will Brown, 20, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urged the administration to pursue even more ambitious deportation goals.
Brown, who said he “couldn’t be more of a fan of Stephen Miller,” the White House aide credited with designing Trump’s immigration policy, noted that the deportation rate of Trump’s second term so far lagged that of the last two Democratic administrations.“Honestly, I don’t think they’re doing enough,” he said.

Harvard wants to ‘queer education’ — but who will actually teach education?

Posted on
The Hill

This ideological rot is not at all unique to Harvard. It’s the norm in teacher prep programs nationwide. The University of Wisconsin system has discussion circles reading “Anti-Racist Baby” and making Black Lives Matter friendship bracelets. The University of Florida fills its syllabi with such critical race theory icons as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Gloria Ladson-Billings. Columbia has a course on “Exploring Gender and Sexuality in Everyday Curriculum Practices.” Some of the most assigned authors, like Paulo Freire and Gloria Watkins, are outright Marxists.

Campus life

How Madison students approach online fashion trends

Posted on
The Cap Times

Pema Hutter-Rennilson and her friend, Lupine Wolf, sit together on a sidewalk bench on State Street on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. The two wear long army-green bottoms, tank tops and statement jewelry.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison students say they like to curate their own fashion sense.

“It helps me be more confident,” Hutter-Rennilson said about having their own style.

Agriculture

Massive Illinois salmonella outbreak 40 years ago highlights risks of raw milk as nation debates unpasteurized dairy

Posted on
Chicago Tribune

John Lucey, director of the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there’s no convincing evidence that raw milk offers tangible nutritional or health benefits when compared with the pasteurized product. But even with the best dairy practices and sampling of milk, the risk of illness is far greater, he said.

“A high percentage of the people who get sick are children,” he said. “That’s the thing that really disappoints me. And scares me.”

Arts & Humanities

Can a pandemic movie be an engine for empathy?

Posted on
WORT FM

Can filmmakers make a good pandemic film five years after the globe-changing year of 2020?  The recently released “Eddington” makes an attempt, but focuses on a hyper local experience with a fictional small town in New Mexico. On the Buzz to talk about the movie is Jeff Smith, a professor specializing in cinema studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

UW Experts in the News