Skip to main content

Category: Opinion

The new college version of “The dog ate my homework”

Posted on
Psychology Today

This is one of those moments where I can really say I did walk a mile and trudge uphill in the snow to find out about a grade. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and when professors posted grades, it was on a sheet outside their office door, and since we didn’t have email, we just relied on when they said they might be posting the grades. It was common to arrive at the door and find that nothing was posted yet. We did not bang on the door, asking why it had taken a little longer. We didn’t march to the provost’s or president’s office and demand to talk to someone about our complaints. Instead, we walked back downhill, picked up a coffee, and headed home. A day or two later, we would try again. And if we had questions about those grades, we checked the syllabus for when the office hours were and planned to see the professor then.

TikTok trends show we still don’t know what we want from men

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

If the bear trend reflects fear, the performative male trend reflects distrust. It started as a parody of a certain kind of man: someone who performs “wokeness” for social approval. What stands out, though, is what these videos don’t show. They rarely show the turn, i.e. the moment where the performance is revealed as manipulation. Instead, they stop at the aesthetic: tote bags, curated sensitivity, painted nails—like the real-life performative male contest held at my alma mater, UW–Madison, earlier this fall.

UW’s ‘exuberant cult of fraternity and sorority’ was defended a century ago

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

This State Journal editorial ran on Dec. 11, 1925:

It is probable that no street the length of Langdon Street in the state has dwelt so many significant people of the earlier period.

The sons and daughters of Langdon Street are known in the world’s affairs, and today are carrying on in many places. The ancestral homes have no special right to complain that, in the march of progress, they have been intruded upon.

Don’t let politics tear Thanksgiving apart. Talk it out.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The good news amid the rancor is that people are not only studying why we’re so polarized, but they are also working on ways to fix it. I learned that fact during my recent interview with Susan Yackee, director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison.

The school is launching a new undergraduate public policy program in the fall of 2026, including a required course titled Advancing Public Policy in a Divided America.

In it, students literally practice talking across ideological divides. “If I don’t work out my bicep, it’s just not gonna get strong, right? It’s the same thing with our students and their skills in talking across differences,” Yackee told me. “[It’s] super easy for them to be siloed in their own little social media environments and not hear or have to interact with people that think differently than them. So we’re gonna force that in the class.”

UW-Madison toes the line between burnout culture and mental health

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

November is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is once again covered in wellness graphics, posters and reminders to slow down and take care of ourselves. The intention is good, but the timing is almost ironic, because if there’s one thing students don’t have in November, it’s the time — or bandwidth — to actually “prioritize wellness.”

Despite Trump moves, COP30 will show efforts to curb planet warming persist

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Next week, world leaders will descend on the port city of Belém, Brazil for the United Nations’ COP30, which begins Nov. 10.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the largest and most significant annual gathering in global efforts to address climate change, and the U.S. government will likely not attend. The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants no part in international efforts to take action on a rapidly warming planet.

Closing UW System campuses defies Wisconsin’s values

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

Born in Wisconsin in the 1960s, I was always taught that Wisconsin valued progressive ideas, transparency in government and above all our excellent education system. These ideals made Wisconsin special.

So it was very saddening to see the recent closing of yet another two-year campus in the Universities of Wisconsin System: UW-Plattville Baraboo Sauk County.

Time to end enormous buyouts for UW coaches

Posted on
Isthmus

Remember when the Badgers football team competed for the Big Ten championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl? If so, your memory would have to go back a few years. Remember when the Badgers lost to a so-so, 20th ranked Michigan team by 14 points and that was considered a moral victory? You’d have to think all the way back to last Saturday for that one. It might be fresher in your mind.

About that column I didn’t write as a UW professor

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

“I am not going to be that professor who posts on social media and is promptly pilloried for expressing an opinion.

“Like many academics these days, I have been wanting to weigh in on recent crises and tragedies that are at the top of the news cycle. But such a course hardly seems wise.”

Written by Russ Castronovo, a professor of English and the director of the Center for the Humanities at UW-Madison.

Trump education cuts quietly declare that opportunity should be rationed on race

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Written by Anthony Hernandez, a faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received a research award from the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation for his study on leadership in higher education.

Closing DDEEA undermines support for UW students

Posted on
The Badger Herald

In an email July 9, University of Wisconsin Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin announced the Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement was ceasing operations and most of its staff would be transferred to other departments within UW. The sudden end of the 15-year-old division walks back the short history of the university administration accommodating its marginalized students.

Helping teens navigate online racism − study shows which parenting strategy works best

Posted on
The Conversation

Parents struggle to help teens deal with online racism. Online racism is different from in-person racism because the people behaving that way usually hide behind fake names, making it hard to stop them. Studies found that teens of color see more untargeted racism – memes, jokes, comments – and racism targeting others online than racism targeted directly at them. But vicarious racism hurts, too.

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.

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.

Immigrant workers deserve legality, not further persecution

Posted on
Wisconsin Examiner

According to the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Green County, where Monroe is located, has experienced a 229% increase in Latinos from 2000 to 2019. That growth has not been accompanied by a surge in murders, robberies, pet-eatings or any other crimes that the current administration has leveled against migrants. Instead Monroe has seen a rise in the number of Mexican restaurants and bilingual masses at the local Catholic church, as well as hardworking community members hoping to make a better life for themselves.

A ray of hope for public broadcasting

Posted on
The Cap Times

While at NPR, Jack Mitchell co-created the long-running afternoon news program “All Things Considered” and was its first producer and newscaster.

Mitchell’s retired now as emeritus professor at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he taught after stepping down as WPR’s director in 1997. In the meantime, he’s authored several books, including my favorite, “Wisconsin on the Air: 100 years of public broadcasting in the state that invented it.”

Jack a few days after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it was closing its doors after Congress took away its $1.1 billion annual funding (about $1.60 per person.)

Tom Still: A new college at UW-Madison focused on AI? Now may be the time

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

What’s so special about being a college versus a school or even a department, which is how computing programs at UW-Madison were structured up until six years ago? It’s not about bragging rights or status, but being able to build business relationships, raise money and more quickly carry out a mission that’s in step with the times.

UW secrecy allegations overblown

Posted on
The Cap Times

While transparency is an important democratic value, the tone and substance of the piece ignore the real complexities of steering a major public institution through extraordinarily difficult times.

The UW administration is working diligently — behind the scenes and under intense pressure — to ensure the university’s long-term viability and academic excellence. That work deserves respect, not knee-jerk criticism.

They attack because we’re strong, not weak

Posted on
Inside Higher Ed

Universities did great things during the 20th century. Presidents and faculty found strength and legitimacy through relevance. They helped in the all-out effort to win the Second World War. Universities anticipated the needs of the Cold War. Research labs produced products that improved people’s daily lives. The University of Minnesota patented Honeycrisp apples. The University of Wisconsin patented fortifying milk with vitamin D.

State Debate: Commentators explore UW cuts, Democratic Socialists and Stephen Colbert

Posted on
The Cap Times

Nobody voted for higher costs, crowded classes and less research at the UW, writes Jordan Ellenburg in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Ideas Lab column. The UW-Madison math professor explains how federal budget cuts are undermining decades of the university’s contributions to industry and the dangers that presents to the economy.

Kathleen Gallagher: Wisconsin must seize the moment with fusion energy as power demand soars

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region have all the pieces to build a fusion industry here. UW-Madison is one of the top two fusion energy research universities in the country (MIT is the other). Amazingly, UW-Madison has spun out three of the world’s 45 fusion companies: SHINE Technologies; Type One Energy and Realta Fusion. And UW-Madison alumni work at all the major U.S. fusion companies that use magnetic (as opposed to laser) plasma containment.

Bucky needs a union

Posted on
Isthmus

That’s where big time college sports clearly needs to go. Rather than fighting steps that would lead to a players union, the UW should be doing everything it can to facilitate it. Because a union is an essential ingredient to the stability that coaches and fans want.

We should hold lawmakers to the standards they force on UW

Posted on
The Cap Times

In their latest attempt at micromanaging an institution for which their support ranks 44th among the 50 states, the budget contains a provision that requires faculty members to teach at least 24 credit hours per year, a number that is reduced to 12 credit hours for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Faculty can buy down the number of courses they must teach by replacing their compensation with funding from other sources, like grants, the reporters explained.

Statistics don’t support UW-Milwaukee shuttering materials engineering program

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Materials engineering programs typically have dozens of students, not hundreds.  To put this into perspective, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an average of just 10 job openings per year for neurologists in Wisconsin. Hopefully, no one would suggest that UW-Madison should stop training neurology residents, since most of us recognize that medical specialists are essential to the kind of society we want to have.

Government cuts to research, health funding will hurt Illinois

Posted on
Chicago Tribune

When I approached graduation from Lake Forest College, I felt lost. How could I blend my passions into a career? I found the answer during a research internship at Rush University on a project funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease. Today, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I am a doctoral candidate in epidemiology, the field that works to understand and reduce disease. My research and training are largely supported by the National Cancer Institute.

Madison has an ‘extraordinary asset’ to rebuild public trust in science

Posted on
Madison Magazine

The Morgridge Institute for Research, or MIR, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has always been a bit of a mystery to me, and not just because the scientific research that goes on there exceeds my limited grasp of biology, chemistry and physics. (Or the fact that the building it shares with the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, or WID, is at the nearly-impossible-to-navigate intersection of University Avenue, Campus Drive, North Randall Avenue and North Orchard Street.)

Proposed TRIO cut jeopardizes at-risk students’ future

Posted on
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

The Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program through TRIO helped me earn my Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and led to my becoming dean of the Dougherty Family College (DFC) at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. DFC is a mentoring student-focused two-year college, and I have incorporated my research and experiences in TRIO programs into the college’s design.

I found power, confidence and calm at a poker table full of men

Posted on
HuffPost

Poker puts into focus the same gender dynamics that can create anxiety for women in a patriarchal society, says Jessica Calarco, a sociologist, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of ”Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.” “You’re expected to read the room, stay composed, and manage risk — much like women do every day in a world that asks them to carry everything without appearing to struggle,” she tells me.

Nearly quarter of WI college students are single moms. They need child care help.

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

While the daycare dilemma is large and complex, colleges have a unique role. Student parents (and faculty and staff) can be supported with resources by the university. Tuition paid by students should cover the costs of child care, if provided on campus.

According to an analysis by the American Council on Education, nearly one in every five undergraduate college students, about 18%, are parents, typically to preschool-aged or younger. In Wisconsin alone, 22% of all undergrads are single moms.

Please, Democrats, just try to be normal

Posted on
The Washington Post

And Allison Prasch, an instructor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is quoted as saying that “Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing.”

Nonsense. Some Democrats trip all over themselves trying to obscure the meaning of what they say. Take referring to felons as part of “justice-involved populations.” Likewise, the term “undocumented person” implies that the problem is one of paperwork. It simply omits the fact that the person resides in the United States illegally.

Opinion | GOP attack on education is bewildering

Posted on
The Cap Times

Cap Times higher education reporter Becky Jacobs detailed this past week how drastically the UW is being challenged by the Trump administration’s indiscriminate cuts to American higher education.

It isn’t just Harvard that’s in the crosshairs, but premier universities throughout the country are being defunded. It’s as if the country’s own government has for mysterious reasons decided to declare war on its world-renowned citadels of learning.

Rising housing costs could be pricing people out of college in Wisconsin

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

We also found something we did not expect: a gender gap in how students respond to rising housing prices. University enrollment among male students drops sharply as housing costs rise. For female students, the pattern is different. In some cases, female enrollment actually increases, perhaps because women see education as a long-term investment worth making, even in tough times. But when tuition and housing costs rise together, even that resilience begins to falter.

Board needs to work with community to keep MPS Italian Immersion Program open

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When I was a student at Rufus King, I took Spanish and Italian courses. Four years later, my younger brother Michael did the same.  After high school, I went on to study Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studied abroad in Italy. After graduation, I used my Italian language skills and taught 4-year-old kindergarten at the Italian Immersion School during the 2008-2009 school year.

UW silence over MAGA attacks deafening

Posted on
The Cap Times

The silence by our administrative and faculty leaders, specifically in my field of the sciences, is deafening. Graduate students are looking for someone to step up for us, while our class sizes are shrinking, our stipends do not meet the cost of living, and our future job prospects are disappearing. Yet UW leadership is all too concerned with playing politics, if that is what you call rolling over for legislative Republicans. The few scientific faculty who will speak publicly shrug off the inevitability of layoffs and decreased class sizes for graduate workers, who do the majority of scientific labor toward cancer cures and Alzheimer’s research.