Letter to the editor from Mladenoff, professor emeritus of forest ecology at UW-Madison who researched forest ecosystems, including disturbance, management, biodiversity, climate change, bioenergy and history.
A Jan. 26 Cap Times article (“UW-Madison launches new center to confront its history of exclusion”) spotlighted the UW-Madison’s announcement that a planned new Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History intends to expand on sifting, winnowing and reckoning by confronting the university’s “long culture of exclusion, racism and religious bigotry.”
Last May, Rebecca Blank was discussing what she regarded as the major unresolved issues she would leave behind at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Muir, the UW alum who inspired President Teddy Roosevelt to create the national park system and is credited with founding environmentalism, was discovered to be a racist who disparaged native Americans and Negroes as “dirty and lazy.” He founded the Sierra Club in 1892, serving as its president until he died in 1914, but during all that time only whites could be admitted as members.
First, graduate assistant unions have been around for more than 50 years, starting with the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1966. The TAA has engaged in collective bargaining since 1969, so the movement is hardly a “nascent” one.
According to U.S. News rankings, the UW-Madison Law School is ranked No. 43 in the nation. That’s candidate Everett Mitchell’s alma mater. Farther down the list is Marquette University Law School, ranked No. 105 — that’s where Janet Protasiewicz graduated. Both Daniel Kelly and Jennifer Dorow list Regent University as their law school. It ranks considerably lower, at No. 142 nationally.
New permanent project expands Sifting & Reckoning exhibit, provides history but fails to address future.
If AI that doesn’t really understand medicine (or much of anything else) can pass the test for being a doctor, then we need to change what we teach doctors—and everyone else. – David Williamson Shaffer is the Sears Bascom Professor of Learning Analytics and the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Data Philosopher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Column by Manuel P. Teodoro, associate professor of public affairs at the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that higher education enrollment patterns have changed, and not necessarily for the better in the eyes of those who run colleges and universities. Or employers who need what those schools produce — talent.
Many Wisconsinites came to mistrust higher education. Rising mistrust eventually underwrote efforts to remake shared governance and tenure in the University of Wisconsin system—direct forerunners of Florida’s undermining of faculty tenure now.
Editorial: The results were troubling in some ways and reassuring in others. But they were definitely worth collecting in these polarizing times, when social media bubbles separate many people into closed-minded tribes. If our college campuses can’t foster a robust exchange of ideas among our brightest young people, they won’t produce the innovation and creativity our society and democracy need to flourish.
As a bedside nurse, nothing compares to the moment when a patient squeezes your hand, looks you in the eyes and says, “Thank you for saving my life.” Those moments are what get me through the bad days when I think I can no longer persevere in this profession that I love. And over the past few years, there have been a lot of bad days.
Editorial cartoon.
Letter to the editor: The University of Wisconsin System’s free speech survey results should come as no surprise. The fact students aren’t comfortable speaking candidly is just how the rest of the world operates.
So, enjoy your ChatGPT fling. While it may be somewhat short-lived and ready for a long-term commitment, around the corner a deeper relationship is coming for the public sector, LLMs, and other forms of Generative AI.Subscribers can find related content at Bloomberg Government. –Ben Van Roo is the CEO and co-founder of Yurts Technologies Inc, an enterprise platform for Generative AI models. Ben also sits on the Advisory Council for the Global SOF Foundation, a non-profit organization for the global special operations community. Prior to Yurts, Ben built the National Security teams at Primer Technologies Inc. and was a national security policy researcher at The RAND Corporation. Ben has a PhD in Operations Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Amid rising education costs, UW Law School must provide students with upfront tuition information.
Letter to the editor: Considering the very cold and snowy weather there was a very good attendance. The audience clearly appreciated both the performances by the Wisconsin Singers, UW-Madison’s Broadway caliber touring production, and Beaver Dam’s own Good Old A Capella under the direction of Mark Lefeber.
Letter to the editor: Nowhere in this article is there any information which would lead me to believe that those who responded — a 12.5% response rate, incentivized with a $10 reward — are necessarily representative of the student population as a whole. If there is such information, let us know, and I will reconsider.
Lawrence Shapiro is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
ChatGPT has many of my university colleagues shaking in their Birkenstocks. This artificial-intelligence tool excels at producing grammatical and even insightful essays — just what we’re hoping to see from our undergraduates.
UW students battle for positions in dorms to earn free housing, represent Madison housing crisis.
UW’s Suzuki Lab develops new meat substitution amid concerns over GMOs, rising food costs.
We’ll never convince others of the merits of our opinions if we don’t trust one another sufficiently to sincerely engage in what the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents wisely identified more than a century ago as “that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
When the Federal Reserve convenes at the end of January 2023 to set interest rates, it will be guided by one key bit of data: the U.S. inflation rate. The problem is, that stat ignores a sizable chunk of the country – rural America. -Tessa Conroy, Development Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
It is within our grasp to solve the problems facing our nation and world. To get there, we must reject the lure of polarization and dogmatic certainty and instead, seek interdependence and collaboration. The world depends on it. –Clif Conrad is a professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author (with Todd Lundberg) of the book “Learning with Others.” Todd Lundberg is an associate director in the Center for Teaching, Learning & Mentoring at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Letter to the editor: The state reportedly has a hefty surplus. Yet no one can find the money to give the students and faculty of UW-Platteville Richland a couple of years warning about their future. Typical, I guess, but puzzling.
Online racial discrimination or harassment has a negative effect on the academic and emotional well-being of students of color. That is the key finding from a study I published recently in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. –Assistant Professor, Phyllis Northway Faculty Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Letter to the editor: It has not only helped and been a great resource for UW-Madison athletes and fans, but many others in Madison, Dane County and the entire state of Wisconsin.
Letter to the editor: This is government at its worst — not honoring its commitments, breaking promises and being indifferent, uncaring and uninterested in how its actions affect a struggling rural county that’s trying to stay afloat.
The cap on easement deductions is a win for the general taxpayers in an otherwise bloated spending bill. Additional reforms could further demonstrate how fiscal prudence makes for good conservation.
Dominic Parker is an economist at the University of Wisconsin, a senior fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, and the Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
Written by Matthew T. Hora, an associate professor of adult and higher education and co-director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Column by Neil Kraus, professor of political science at UW-River Falls and author of two books on inequality in urban politics.
Letter to the editor: UW-Madison’s athletic director deserves a hand for his firm, capable leadership these last few months.
We have multiple attributes valuable to higher education. The campus is located in a beautiful environment that supports the Wisconsin Idea, exemplifying how all colleges could be revived and offer what the regents want: affordability and accessibility.
Column by Norman Jensen, a retired UW School of Medicine and Public Health professor. A group of 25 white advocates contributed to this column.
The cost of delivering safe, clean tap water to every household and business in a community is massive. In fact, it may be among the most expensive of all human undertakings. That is why only the wealthiest countries have achieved it at high rates and why 2 billion people on our planet still lack it.
Co-authored by Manny Teodoro, an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: At the heart of Great Lakes medical physics research is the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Medical Physics. It was the first such department in the country and is the largest in terms of faculty members and graduate students, said Brian Pogue, department chair and a professor in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
“We have close to 100 grad students working on medical imaging technologies,” Pogue said. “We have an army.”
Medical Physics’ faculty are among the university’s top royalty recipients and have developed world class technologies like the tomotherapy radiation technique, the ubiquitous pinnacle radiation treatment planning software, and lunar bone mineral densitometry to detect osteoporosis.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman recently contributed to the coming demise of Richland Center. He has effectively closed a two-year campus that has been in Richland Center for over 50 years. It has been a cultural hub, a financial asset and a source of great pride.
It was a very welcome thing to me that the Journal Sentinel along with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio brought the Main Street Agenda to “We the People” in Pewaukee.Many people I know (regardless of political affiliation, economic status, or cultural background) are fed up with the incessant blaring ads and speeches blaming whoever the “other” is in order to get us vote for them.The ads say very little of substance about what the core issues are, and even less about how they would go about resolving them, only who to blame − again, so you vote for the candidate running the ad. Nothing useful is gained by them.
Dear Editor: Jay Rothman, president of the UW Board of Regents, recently contributed to the coming demise of Richland Center. How? He has effectively closed a two-year campus that has been a mainstay in Richland Center for over 50 years. It has been a cultural hub, a financial asset, a source of great pride.
Letter to the editor: I want to applaud the UW-Madison’s women athletes for a phenomenal 2022. While concurrently celebrating the 50th anniversary of Title IX, UW women athletes continue to make strides in a number of sports.
This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs was excited to team up with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Public Radio on the Main Street Agenda project. It is part of our mission to bring people together to solve the problems affecting our communities, and our faculty have remarkable research and expertise to help inform those public policy discussions.
Written by Susan Webb Yackee is a professor of public affairs and director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison.
Letter to the editor: I would suggest that the new train station be built near the UW campus, as many college students do not have cars, rely on public transportation and the university is centrally located in the city.
Letter to the editor: We have a granddaughter who is a freshman at UW-Madison this year.
Within the last month or so, she was told she would have little chance of getting a dorm room for the 2023-2024 academic year. Dorm rooms are apparently needed for an ever-increasing number of incoming freshmen.
Dear Editor: Wisconsin’s projected surplus of $6.5 billion is an opportunity to realize Wisconsin values.
The University of Wisconsin is also valued by citizens. The surplus must support at least an inflationary budget increase, offsetting a continued freeze in undergraduate tuition. The UW educates thousands, supports businesses and farmers statewide, and its research and knowledgeable graduates are valuable to businesses.
Letter to the editor: Along with thousands of other alumni, fans and UW football players, I was shocked to find out that Jimmy Leonhard had not gotten the head coaching job at UW-Madison.
Letter to the editor: UW-Madison athletic director Chris McIntosh stated during the Luke Fickell press conference that ensuring the survival of the athletic department serving around 800 student athletes factored into his recent UW football coaching change. The media ignored this very important point.
Letter to the editor: The Big 10 is changing and each school must evaluate their team and coaching staff going forward. The money involved in college athletics has grown substantially, and successful football programs are normally the driver for the entire athletic program. Wisconsin must return its football team to its winning ways so that top players will want to come to Wisconsin.
The 2022 selection is “How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America” by Clint Smith. He was at UW Madison in An Evening with Clint Smith, on Nov. 1 , 2022. Smith was interviewed by the new UW Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin.
Student groups have made similar calculations: a student group at the University of Illinois estimated as of April that the university holds $230 million in fossil fuel investments, and a student group at the University of Wisconsin estimated as of last November that the university held $315 million in fossil fuel investments. In the most extreme case, Bloomberg recently reported that the University of Texas is earning more than $6 million a day derived from vast oil and gas holdings in the Permian Basin.
This, I recall thinking, is the precise moment and exact place where Wisconsin’s football past meets its future.
Letter to the editor: We are writing as Jewish members of the UW-Madison community in response to the recent anti-Zionist chalkings on our campus, and especially to the reactions from your offices, UW-Madison Hillel and other campus organizations and media on and off campus.
Letter to the editor: As a Badgers football season ticketholder for more than 40 years, I am sorely disappointed in UW’s disregard of the sentiments of the players and the fans in overlooking the efforts and support of coach Jim Leonhard. I have abandoned any interest in supporting the UW Athletic Department.
As a physician, I look forward to serving patients based on the ideals of the Hippocratic Oath rather than following arbitrary guidelines created by insurance companies.
-Aamir Hussain is a resident physician practicing in Washington, DC. Rufus Sweeney, a medical student at the University of Wisconsin, assisted in the creation of this story.
In keeping with the Jewish practice of tokhehah, which could be translated as “calling-in,” we are asking you to recognize and redress the damage that these responses have caused.
This is my 31st and final year as a professor on the campus that Brush Creek runs through. It was UW-Center Richland when I started, then UW-Richland of the UW Colleges, and will end as UW-Platteville Richland. It was recently announced that in-person degree instructional programs at UW-Platteville Richland, about 60 miles northwest of Madison in Richland County, will cease as of July 1, 2023.
Noted: My mother moved to Madison from Chicago just over 50 years ago to pursue a college degree and provide a brighter future for my sister and me. The Gee family now consists of three generations of University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates. The university, and a small but thriving community of Black UW alumni, offered opportunities, resources and friendships that allowed us to create lives of unlimited promise, rooted in Black excellence and Black culture.
Wisconsin’s $6.6 billion surplus is an unparalleled opportunity to shape state policy. Along with the predictable talk of tax cuts and general investments in education, roads and health care, Democratic leaders in Madison should pay particular attention to one of the oldest public institutions in the Dairy State: the University of Wisconsin System.
The American Bar Association is considering a major change in legal education: eliminating the longstanding requirement that applicants for law school take a valid and reliable admissions test like the Law School Admissions Test. This change would be effective with the law school class entering in 2026.
-Berkeley Law’s dean Erwin Chemerinsky and University of Wisconsin Law School’s dean Daniel Tokaji argue that law schools should not eliminate standardized tests for admissions. The ABA’s proposal to do just that may harm diversity efforts, they say.
I spoke with Barry Burden, a respected expert on Wisconsin and national politics and a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Burden also shared his post-election analysis with the Rotary Club of Madison this week.
