A new bill introduced by four of Wisconsin’s republican legislators focuses on free speech at University of Wisconsin System institutions and technical colleges. The proposed legislation aims to uphold First Amendment protections and ensure due process in disciplinary proceedings
Karen Oberhauser is the former director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arboretum and cofounder of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project. She has four decades of experience researching monarch butterflies.
Oberhauser said that at this point in the monarch season, the butterflies are still living and breeding in northern ranges as far north as Canada, but she added that the earliest generation of migrators to Mexico are now about halfway to their destination.
“I just looked at those maps and I see some monarchs are showing up now in roosting sites way down in Kansas and even a little bit further south right now,” she said.
Lauren Fields was less than four months into a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when she got an email message from her program officer at the federal agency.
A doctoral candidate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fields has been studying the biochemistry involved in the feeding process of a common crab species. She and her faculty supervisor believe the project can shed new light on problems such as diabetes and obesity in human beings.
A 2021 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Financial Security found 77% of Social Security recipients have reduced odds of owning a home.
Data from AADAPt and other studies offer some clues. In a study published in May, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison analyzed the links between adverse social experiences and vascular injuries in brain tissue.
The team studied 740 brain samples donated to Alzheimer’s research centers. Regardless of race, the brains of people who had lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods or experienced other discrimination over their lifetime were more likely to bear signs of vascular damage, ranging from blocked vessels to hemorrhages.
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater at Rock County is partnering with Mercyhealth to expand access to healthcare education for professionals and students in the field.
Security for college officials is being scrutinized in the wake of Kirk’s murder, too. University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is beefing up security protocols ahead of its meeting on the UW-Madison campus this week. Walkthrough metal detectors and bag searches are required for all meeting attendees. It was unclear if the measures were temporary or permanent, and how much it would cost. Universities of Wisconsin spokesperson Mark Pitsch would not answer questions seeking details.”The safety and security of the meeting is paramount, and as a result we are implementing enhanced security measures,” Pitsch said in a statement instead.
Wisconsin colleges and universities with significant Hispanic and Latino populations could lose millions after the U.S. Department of Education announced last week that it plans to end several long-standing grant programs it says violate the Constitution.
In Wisconsin, the change would affect Alverno College, Herzing University, Gateway Technical College and Mount Mary University.
Written by Frances Vavrus, the vice provost and dean of the International Division at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
While officially adopted by the IHRA in 2016, the definition has been in use for about 20 years, according to Chad Alan Goldberg, a sociologist and professor of Jewish studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He said it’s a response to rising antisemitism in recent decades, with an additional increase since the war between Israel and Hamas after Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It’s coming in a context of heightened concerns about antisemitism,” he said. “Proponents … think it would be a good idea because they think it would make it easier to identify and combat anti-Jewish hate speech and hate crimes, anti-Jewish harassment, vandalism and assault.”
Amaya Atucha, a professor and chair of the department of plant and agroecosystem sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says many apple growers in northeast Wisconsin are reporting less-than-ideal crops.
“After a cold winter caused potential damage to apple trees, cool spring temperatures led to delayed and slower pollination, resulting in smaller crops in some orchards in Northeast Wisconsin,” Atucha said in her scouting report.
He received a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from UW-Madison in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree in urban forestry from the University of Minnesota in 1994.
“There’s a whole bunch of studies on violence in the news, documenting the fact that people’s emotional cognitive reactions early on are high, and then as time goes on, the more you are exposed, those cognitive emotional reactions lessen,” said Karyn Riddle, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin who studies violence in media.
Timothy Smeeding, professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, similarly believes that tariffs will influence poverty rates primarily through their effect on prices. The industries most vulnerable, he said, are those dependent on sales, with grocery workers, retail workers and other blue collar professions likely to be hardest hit.
“When the SNAP cuts and Medicaid cuts go into effect, the same people will be hurt as grocery stores sell less and health care costs rise, closing some stores and maybe some rural hospitals and clinics,” he added.
“It could be that Weinstein’s appointment represents an effort to turn down the temperature,” says Kathleen Culver, director of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, against the pressure of Trump’s frequent complaints of liberal bias in the media.
“Or it could be part of a larger effort to redesign CBS News to pursue neutral coverage or take a more partisan tack, either in pursuit of a corporate owner’s partisan goals or in pursuit of a larger audience and a proper profit motive.”
