Category: Opinion

The 97-page Roth Report on the future of the UW System is extremely detailed and lays out several specific policy priorities for the UW System, minus UW-Madison, which “stands apart.” Because voters are busy, I thought it would be helpful to inform them of some of the more consequential elements of the Republican plan for the UW System.

We have experienced four school semesters tainted by COVID-19 and the policies the federal government, Wisconsin, Madison and the University of Wisconsin have put on us. If these policies are ever going to stop, they should stop now. Enough is enough.

As UW-Madison professor Mark Copelovitch says in the New York Times podcast “The Argument: Is the University of Austin Just a PR Stunt?”: “We’re trying to make a commitment to sifting and winnowing … we’re scholars trying to figure out what is the, quote unquote, ‘truth’ about how the world works.”

Two years into the pandemic, COVID-19 is here to stay and no longer the risk seen in 2020.

Evan Gerstmann, professor of Political Science and International Relations at Loyola Marymount University, is a UW-alum who has written numerous articles on the role of cancel culture on college campuses. He believes that the phenomenon is a threat to free speech, calling it “problematic,” “unaccountable” and “anti-democratic.”

Widespread infections mean UW’s fall testing approach will no longer protect faculty, immunosuppressed groups.

Lack of available resources, active counseling leaves students vulnerable.

Encouraging, putting money towards outdoor activities in cold weather could improve student health, performance.

I began to define myself as a pre-business student, embedding the major into part of my personality. I was envious of every peer I met who was a direct admit to the business school and I relentlessly picked their brains in order to understand how they got in — and how I could too.

Let’s rip the band-aid off right now. I was sexually assaulted this past October. I’d like to share my experience in order to spread awareness for survivors of sexual assault — specifically male survivors.

The Board of Regents has selected a new president to lead the University of Wisconsin System Schools — and the decision was made behind closed doors.

The qualified candidate may be excellent, but I wish he had more of a record of supporting liberal education, which has been and should continue to be the unifying mission (along with the Wisconsin Idea) of the System.

UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt has a solid history in higher education, both in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Schmidt also has experience with the Minnesota Technical College System, which has many similarities with the Wisconsin Technical College System.

As a former academic who is married to a lawyer, I want to comment on the possibility of hiring a private practice lawyer to lead the University of Wisconsin System.

Letter to the editor: The well-heeled Hannah-Jones and her “1619 Project” (which rarely mentions King) are not “left wing” but entirely part of the big business aim of splintering the working class on racial grounds. UW-Madison should be ashamed of promoting a work that has been so thoroughly discredited by world-class historians including James McPherson, Gordon Wood and Victoria Bynum.

Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD, FAAP, is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and also holds master’s degrees in public health and children’s librarianship.

As academics engage with and learn from communities, the benefits of community engagement—more valid, compelling and informative scientific discovery—will continue to become apparent. Ultimately, the motivations driving community-engaged scholarship coalesce around a desire to improve the quality of one’s research, which should be a career-long goal for all of us in academia.

-Kristen Slack is a professor of social work and affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is also the founder of Prof2Prof, an interdisciplinary platform for sharing research scholarship as well as instructional tools, resources and strategies for higher education. Visit their FAQ page for more details on how to use Prof2Prof to heighten the discoverability of your academic scholarship, broadly defined, and to learn from peers within and across disciplines, continents and academic roles.

Column by Ion Meyn, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

“I think there is still a lot to be done in terms of representation and embodying diversity in UW-Madison’s overtly heteronormative environment.” – QTPOC’s founder on the university’s needed effort in creating more spaces for queer and trans students of color.

ASM Student Council passed legislation this fall in hopes of re-establishing new system-wide student governance body.

Abloh was born in Rockford, Illinois. His parents were immigrants from Ghana. He served as a creative director for fellow Illinois native, rapper Kanye West and then shifted to his passion for fashion design after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in civil engineering and architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In light of winning distinguished award, UW’s Odyssey Beyond Bars demonstrates how an educational program helped incarcerated students succeed.

As members of Catalysts for Science Policy, we recently examined 34 departmental handbooks from graduate programs in science, technology, engineering, math and medicine fields at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The goal of this policy analysis was to act as a case study, reviewing and analyzing current handbook policies to better understand their utility as a rapid and feasible first step in establishing a healthy environment for graduate students. We assessed the handbooks based on mentorship guidelines developed by Future of Research, evaluating their policies in several categories: mentoring; academic and nonacademic misconduct; transparent accountability; diversity, equity and inclusion; and graduate student representation in decision making.

With a majority of UW employees and students vaccinated, mandates are unnecessary, morally questionable.

Alternative testing methods provide less expensive, less invasive option to deter cheating.

My school, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recognizes that Hmong Americans are underrepresented in higher education and nominated me to apply for a fellowship that supports students whose heritage is underrepresented in science. So I was shocked when the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study rejected my nomination because I did not fit into its racial/ethnic underrepresentation criteria.

The most progressive thing Blank did was help institute the Badger Tuition Promise, which guaranteed free tuition for everyone whose parents make less than $60,000 a year. This was a great step to help more people that were previously unable to attend UW because of financial difficulties.

I do think the future chancellor needs to make more of an effort to communicate with students, explaining both their role and policy processes. They should be more involved in understanding student life on campus and making up for the time lost due to COVID.

Because it is so easy to figure out the regulations, it seems like Sen. Cruz’s choice to come to Wisconsin and create social media outrage with his absurd Tweets could have been an intentional way to generate free attention for his podcast. It appears to be a skilled publicity stunt.

After decades of design flaws, structural problems, UW’s College of Letters & Science is finally replacing Mosse Humanities Building.

System requires high levels of documentation despite more UW, national college students requiring aid.

Students should change their consumption habits to support environmentally friendly corporations.

’I have to imagine [UW] is in the best possible position for a new leader to come in and make their mark as well,’ University Committee member says.

And if all that fails, the muscle will be ready for another violent march on Washington. Be prepared, the America we know is worsening by the month.

-Alfred McCoyAlfred McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

“But what if America’s attendance crisis is about much more than students missing class?” write Eric Grodsky, sociology professor, and education researcher Elizabeth Vaade. “What if, instead, it is a reflection of family and community crises these students face – such as being evicted from the family apartment, fearing for their safety in their neighborhood or suffering an illness?”

My (Rajshree Agarwal) forthcoming research with Martin Ganco at University of Wisconsin and Joe Raffiee at University of Southern California was supported by a grant from Kauffman Foundation.