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Category: Opinion

UW doesn’t need free speech survey — Laurence Schiffman

Wisconsin State Journal

Letter to the editor: After reading the proposed questions, I am convinced that UW System is more concerned with student attitudes than with educated opinions. The faculty should be able to generate a clear policy of tolerance that includes the concepts embodied in the First Amendment. There should be consequences if it is not followed.

Yes to endorsement deals, pay for grades, NCAA enforcement

Wisconsin State Journal

Star athletes at UW-Madison are finally getting a piece of the enormous revenue surrounding Badgers sports, especially men’s basketball and football. That’s only fair. Other players with lower profiles deserve greater financial incentives, too. We love the idea, floated by the chancellor earlier this month, of offering student athletes cash awards for good grades. That will help continue Wisconsin’s strong reputation for graduating most of its players in all of its sports.

Opinion | Good riddance, Joe Sanfelippo

Captimes

“Ernie,” as we reporters used to call him back then, was one of several GOP legislators convinced that the University of Wisconsin was being overrun by hoodlums and communists, and they demanded that UW administrators purge the school of these subversives who were railing against the Vietnam War and the direction of the country.

Opinion | Let’s make the tax system reflect our values

CapTimes

As we discuss questions of tax burden in Wisconsin, the Biden administration’s so-called billionaire income tax plan, or IRS reforms and funding levels, we need to view our tax system as a statement of our community’s values.

Sarah Halpern-Meekin is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.

Reading Russian Media Between the Lines: On Kommersant’s “Nuremberg” Photo

NYU Jordan Center

Francine Hirsch s Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author, most recently, of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II (Oxford, 2020).

The Russian newspaper Kommersant quietly engaged in an act of resistance on Wednesday. The newspaper ran an interview with the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, spouting all the usual propaganda. But on Twitter, alongside a link to the article, it ran a photo of Naryshkin with the word “Nuremberg” in the background.

Tommy Thompson: Stop apologizing, start bragging about UW System

Wisconsin State Journal

When I left my parents’ farm in Elroy to attend UW-Madison, we were so poor that I carried my belongings in a paper bag instead of a suitcase. I went on to earn a law degree, serve in the Legislature, get elected to four terms as governor, lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as its secretary, and become president of the University of Wisconsin System.

Putin’s Revised Foreign Agent Law Could Enable Mass Repression

Lawfare Blog

In the past two weeks, it has become increasingly dangerous for Russian citizens to participate in anti-war demonstrations, to express opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or to share true information about the military campaign. The Russian State Duma has introduced legislation that threatens fines, forced military conscription and prison sentences for speaking the truth.

Francine Hirsch is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020).

UW driving up housing prices

The Capital Times

Letter to the editor: Students at the university, armed with either wealthy out-of-state parents or endless supplies of student loans, have driven housing prices in Madison to the breaking point.

Now is wrong time to end UW mandate — Emma Schmeling

Wisconsin State Journal

Letter to the editor: As a second-year undergraduate, I have never experienced college without masks. I am just as excited as anyone that the mask mandate is coming to a close. But I can’t be the only one who feels the timing of it all makes no sense.

How the Soviet Union Helped Establish the Crime of Aggressive War

Just Security

Diplomats and lawyers have been talking in recent days about convening an international tribunal on the Nuremberg model or something akin to it to try Russian President Vladimir Putin and those in his inner circle for waging a war of aggression against Ukraine. And rightly so.

-By Francine Hirsch

UW students could use a snow day — Natalie Unger

Wisconsin State Journal

Letter to the editor: More than just safety (which is still important), college students have had a tumultuous two years amid the pandemic and could use the relief of a snow day when conditions are snowy and icy. Snow days provide momentary freedom from responsibilities and allow for some well-deserved free time. We have rarely had days off (and got no spring break last year).

Why we seem mired in a time of ‘toddler meltdown behavior’

The Capital Times

Six months into the pandemic, Christine Whelan sensed something was different. “I was noticing this odd thing, that more and more cars had taken their mufflers off, and there were more and more people gunning their engines really loudly, making a bunch of racket on the road,” said Whelan, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and expert in human behavior and cultural trends. “I couldn’t understand why I was only now hearing this, and I had this sense in the back of my mind that this had something to do with the pandemic, and with a sense of anger at the political world around us and a sense of disenfranchisement.”

Richard Keller: Memorializing Death in an Age of Mass Mortality

Somatosphere

How do we remember death when it constitutes our landscape? In an age of ubiquitous mortality—not only pandemic deaths, but also deaths from meteorological disasters, deaths of migrants seeking refuge from their war-torn homes, and the more banal declines in life expectancy in broad swaths of the United States—what kinds of death do we memorialize, and what kinds do we disappear, either actively or through habituation or an atrophy of memory?

How media changes eroded political civility in Wisconsin

The Capital Times

The new book “Battleground” is a deeply academic dive into how Wisconsin became such an unwelcoming place for civil discourse during the past dozen years … “The decay of the traditional political communication ecology in our state has accelerated over the past decade,” said Lewis Friedland, an emeritus journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of six co-authors, all professors. Besides Friedland, the authors are Dhavan Shah and Michael Wagner, who teach journalism at UW, Katherine Cramer and Jon Pevehouse, both UW political science professors, and Chris Wells, a former UW journalism professor now at Boston University.

A new COVID study that examined Wisconsin, Seattle, and San Francisco could help predict where caseloads are likely to be the highest

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Noted: Brian Levy is an assistant professor of sociology at George Mason University. Karl Vachuska is a research assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their study looked at data in Wisconsin, San Francisco and Seattle.

Voters need to know GOP plans to cripple UW System

The Capital Times

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.

Is there too much censorship on campus?

Daily Cardinal

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.”

Is ‘cancel culture’ a problem at the University of Wisconsin-Madison?

Daily Cardinal

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.”

Column: The reality of your college major

Daily Cardinal

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.

Column: ‘Are you okay?’

Daily Cardinal

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.