The education-secretary nominee avoided specifics as senators pressed for her positions on issues including student debt, regulations on for-profit-colleges, and Title IX.
An hour into Tuesday’s confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, a clear pattern had emerged. Democrats on the Senate education committee sought to nail down answers from Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary on a series of specific questions — but they received few or no specific answers.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor says people shouldn’t expect the truth anytime soon about the authenticity of the dossier containing unsubstantiated information about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
I applaud my colleague Donald P. Moynihan’s critiques of the legislative interventions with university courses that have emerged in recent times. A critical aspect of academic freedom is the freedom of faculty and departments to choose what and how to teach. But he is wrong to play down the suffocating effects of identity politics activists and the forces of so-called political correctness.
Noted: Claims of higher crime rates at hip-hop events need quantifying, and UCAN has enlisted undergraduate students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Community and Environmental Sociology to take a look at police and crime data related to Madison performance venues. The data has been compiled and will be analyzed this spring.
Noted: Problems in other brain systems, like vision, might also increase athlete injury risk, says Alison Brooks at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. But she warns that the underlying relationship between concussion and other injuries is unclear. “How do we know these athletes weren’t different to begin with? Maybe the reason they got a concussion in the first place is that there’s something different about them,” she says.
Prosecutors have charged a Minneapolis man with murder and battery in the fatal beating of a Saudi college student last Halloween, a crime that gained international attention.
In Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, political scientist Robert Putnam cites research that points to the billions of dollars lost to American society, over a generation, when a large portion of our young adults are under-educated and under- or unemployed. These costs include literal costs to social welfare structures, as well as lost tax revenue.
Lawmakers in two US states have introduced legislation that would eliminate tenure for public college and university professors.
Defensive coordinator for the University of Wisconsin football team has been chosen as the University of California at Berkeley’s new head football coach, UC Berkeley athletic officials have announced.
Quoted: “It depends on how many people apply. They divide the money up, but I don’t think we’re looking at very many bucks,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Robert Cropp, who was an expert witness in the original case.
Quoted: Edward Hubbard, an assistant professor in the department of educational psychology and the neuroscience training program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the brain regions involved in processing colors are adjacent to the regions involved in recognizing letters and numbers.
In 2013, archeologists discovered the body of a 13th century farmwoman in a graveyard outside the former city of Troy in western Turkey. She sported strawberry-sized calcified nodules below her ribs, which they assumed were a sign of tuberculosis, a common disease for people of her era. But it turns out, they were wrong.
I feel safer now that Rep. David Murphy will personally decide if UW-Madison courses are “legit.”
As Gov. Walker, the legislature and the University of Wisconsin Regents address the 2017-2019 budget for the state, they need to be mindful that the Milwaukee was one of three metropolitan areas out of 51 with a population over one million people that lost jobs in 2016. The four-county area lost about 2000 jobs.
A college campus event hosting Milo Yiannopoulos and Martin Shkreli, two controversial and polarizing figures who have both been banned on Twitter, was canceled because of heated protests Friday night.
Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. However, in a new study of ancient DNA, researchers reported evidence of a woman who died of a pregnancy complication — specifically, a fatal bacterial infection — 800 years ago at Troy.
Noted: University of Wisconsin medial law expert Robert Drechsel argues the opposite: “It is cautioning readers that such-and-such statement in the dossier has been found to be untrue as it continues wrestling with verification. So I think such acknowledgement might actually undermine any claim of reckless disregard.”
Noted: A centralized massive protest has its advantages, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor Pamela Oliver. “(Media) rarely get interested unless an action is either very, very large … or disruptive, or especially, violent,” she said.
Who would you call if you had a wood-related question? The Forest Products Laboratory, of course. But, did you even know of its existence?
Quoted: “This is amazing work that reshapes how we think about bacterial interactions and biofilm formation,” says Helen Blackwell, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the study. “It shows us a simple and generic way for many different bacteria to interact thorough electrical signals.”
Quoted: Martin Ganco, an associate business professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is part of a nationwide effort to find out how widespread non-competes are, which industries use them, and how they impact companies, workers and the overall economy.
Gov. Scott Walker’s State of the State message this week expanded on his recent theme of how bright the future is for the state — a bright future that must assume a strong contribution from the University of Wisconsin System if it is to be a reality.
epublican lawmakers in at least two states — Sen. Brad Zaun of Iowa and state Rep. Rick Brattin of Missouri — proposed bills this month that would eliminate the tenure system at public colleges and universities.
Lawmakers in two states this week introduced legislation that would eliminate tenure for public college and university professors. A bill in Missouri would end tenure for all new faculty hires starting in 2018 and require more student access to information about the job market for majors. Legislation in Iowa would end tenure even for those who already have it.
Death during pregnancy or childbirth would have been common in the ancient world, but these stories are often invisible in the archaeological record. However, in a new study of ancient DNA, researchers reported evidence of a woman who died of a pregnancy complication — specifically, a fatal bacterial infection — 800 years ago at Troy.
Noted: Dr. Howard Steinberg, a veterinary pathologist at UW-Madison, was part of the committee for several years beginning in 2006. While he doesn’t recall seeing anything particularly alarming, he believes that “an institute of that stature” would benefit from a voluntary external accreditation. “The major issue is the fact that we felt they should be accredited by an agency that normally accredits animal care and use programs,” Steinberg said.
Noted: “Anybody that bought some dairy bought some milk from 2003 to 2010 can claim some damages,” Bob Cropp, a UW-Madison economist, said.
Noted: “Any time influenza viruses start to behave in an unusual way, there’s a concern about what might happen,” said Aleisha Swartz, a doctor on loan from the University of Wisconsin veterinary school’s shelter medicine program, which is managing medical care at the quarantine center. “There’s this virus that popped up, and if we didn’t respond, it could have become widespread in cats all over the place.”
CHAPEL HILL — Oliver Smithies, the first person to win a Nobel Prize while a member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s faculty, died Tuesday at age 91 after a short illness.
Putting pen to paper – or, more commonly, fingers to keyboard – can be one of the most arduous tasks surrounding the writing process. Ideas swirl in the mind, but executing on that vision sometimes seems like an impossibility.
When Republican legislators threaten to withhold funding from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, fire professors who teach material they deem controversial, or comb through the list of course offerings to make sure classes meet some conservative definition of what is legitimate to teach, it has a chilling effect on academic and intellectual freedom and threatens our democracy. These attacks on free speech will continue to poison the atmosphere on our campus and do significant damage to Madison’s national and international reputation.
Noted: The Daily Caller News Foundation spoke with Kathleen Bartzen Culver, assistant professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the relevant legal standards in defamation lawsuits. Culver is a media ethicist who teaches a course in media law, but is not a legal expert.
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to cut tuition at the University of Wisconsin and use taxpayer funds to pay for it is shaking up normal political alliances with some Democrats expressing support while skeptical fellow Republicans worry it could put the state on a path toward socialist Bernie Sanders’ free college tuition plan.
EAU CLAIRE — Universities around the state will get additional money to reduce tuition for in-state students, but they will have to show they earned it, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday in Eau Claire.
Any lost revenues for UW System schools from a proposed tuition reduction would be made up for with additional state dollars for the universities, Gov. Scott Walker said Wednesday in Eau Claire.
Gov. Scott Walker promises the University of Wisconsin tuition cut he’s proposing will be “significant,” but he’s still not saying how much it will be. This while the UW system is asking for a $42.5 million increase in the next budget.
Oliver Smithies, a British-born biochemist and inveterate tinkerer who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering a powerful tool for identifying the roles of individual genes in health and disease, died on Tuesday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 91.
A day after proposing a tuition cut for University of Wisconsin undergraduate students in his State of the State address, Governor Scott Walker offered more details about the plan during stops across the state.
Sixty years ago, Chief Justice Earl Warren warned our nation that we had a choice. Either “teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate,” or “our civilization will stagnate and die.” There was no third option.
The ancient skeleton of a woman who lived near the storied city of Troy has given up the secrets of what killed her. Researchers unearthed the Byzantine bones and discovered both that she was pregnant and that a bacterial infection probably caused her death.
Twelve UC Berkeley professors sent a letter to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks requesting that campus administration cancel Berkeley College Republican’s event for Milo Yiannopoulos.
It’s an exciting week at Big Foot High School in Walworth. “We’ve got a lot of Packers fans here and a lot of Travis Frederick fans here, so a lot of people are talking about the game,” said Tim Collins, the school’s Athletic Director.
Interviewed: We examine Mr. Obama’s so-called “Pivot to Asia” strategy with Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McCoy has called Mr. Obama a “geopolitical genius”.
It’s not the legendary Troy of Agamemnon and Paris, but the site of the ancient city is still giving up secrets to disease detectives who study the evolution of bacteria and other microbes that continue to cause illness in humans today.
A skeleton from the outskirts of what was once the ancient city of Troy, has yielded the genome of an 800 year old mystery infection.
In late December, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources altered and removed information on its website concerning climate change, its impacts, and ways to mitigate and adapt to those impacts.
MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker promised in his State of the State address to cut tuition for all in-state University of Wisconsin undergraduates, even after the head of the multi-campus system called for him to end a four-year freeze.
Gov. Scott Walker pledged Tuesday in his State of the State speech to cut tuition for all in-state undergraduate students at UW System campuses.
Noted: Though Neanderthals survived this turbulence, they were never able to build up their numbers. (Across all of Eurasia, at any point in history, says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “there probably weren’t enough of them to fill an N.F.L. stadium.”)
Governor Scott Walker delivered a State of the State address on Tuesday which contained few surprises. But the Republican governor seemingly caught Democrats and officials with the University of Wisconsin System off guard with the one unexpected item he did include.
Gov. Scott Walker said he wants to cut undergraduate tuition for Wisconsin residents at University of Wisonsin System schools in his annual State of the State address Tuesday.
Quoted: So what hell is an organ? Tom Broman, a science historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, laughs when I ask him.
Noted: Then there is a study by Bonnie Svarstad and Chester Bond of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison more than three decades ago: They found that patients in for-profit nursing homes got heavier doses of sedatives than those in nonprofits got. Explaining the pattern, the economist Burton Weisbrod wrote that sedatives were “less expensive than, say, giving special attention to more active patients who need to be kept busy.”
Arguing that courses and programs on UW campuses have a liberal bias, some Republican lawmakers in the state assembly have said that creating “ideological diversity” will be one of their priorities this session. A higher education reporters tells us about the call for different viewpoints on campus, and debates over academic freedom.
A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison professors criticized the state Department of Natural Resources on Monday for scrubbing its website of language that stated human activity is causing climate change, accusing the agency of ignoring facts and violating the public trust.
Gov. Scott Walker is set to deliver his seventh annual State of the State address Tuesday afternoon. “A lot of his State of the State (addresses) are less rattling off policy ideas, as compared to other governors or certainly presidents when they do the State of the Union,” said Mike Wagner, professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When he does talk about what’s to come, it’s not always with a great deal of specifics.”
In the 2004 disaster film “The Day After Tomorrow,” global warming leads to the failure of an enormous current in the Atlantic Ocean, triggering catastrophic natural disasters and establishing freezing conditions in North America and Europe over a matter of weeks.
Quoted: Ken Mayer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a book on executive power, agreed on this point: “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Educational watchdogs are warning that newly emboldened Republican leaderships at the state level are ramping up pressure on universities to curb programs they claim “advance the politically correct agenda of liberal administrators and staff”.
