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Category: Opinion

Editorial: Seeking justice

WISC-TV 3

It’s hard for us to see a just conclusion that doesn’t include Cephus’ reinstatement as a student in good standing at the university.

Tom Oates: UW-Alabama home-and-home series marks step in right direction for college football

Wisconsin State Journal

Column: Such a series between perennial top-25 teams, a staple on non-conference schedules well into the 1990s, has become all too rare in college football. If you’re looking for a root cause as to why fans aren’t going to games, having to pay increasingly big bucks to watch a steady stream of unattractive opponents is a really good place to start.

A Racist History Behind Trump’s Baltimore Attack

CityLab

Paige Glotzer is Assistant Professor and John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Chair in the History of American Politics, Institutions, and Political Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her book, Building Suburban Power: The Business of Exclusionary Housing Markets, will be published in April, 2020.

Bob Holvenstot: UW, DNR not doing enough to clean up lakes

The Capital Times

Letter to the editor: The University of Wisconsin, Department of Natural Resources and a local fishing club seem to be more interested in either studying a dirty lake, promoting a “trophy” fishery or catching those trophy fish, at the expense of the general interest of residents, especially those who own shoreline property.

Keller: Europe’s killer heat waves are a new norm. The death rates shouldn’t be.

The Washington Post

On the southern outskirts of Paris, a cemetery holds the bodies of the city’s unclaimed dead. Until recently, there lay a hundred whom some consider to be the first victims of global climate change. They were mostly elderly and poor, the forgotten people of the worst weather disaster in contemporary European history: the heat wave of August 2003, which killed nearly 15,000 in France alone and thousands more across the continent.

Opinion | McConnell Doesn’t Want the Senate to Talk About Trump’s Tweets. Here’s a Way Around Him.

New York Times

Whether Republican senators would rise to the occasion is debatable. With John McCain and Jeff Flake now gone from the Senate, it seems less likely that many of their Republican colleagues will take a stand against this racist tilt to our politics. But the only way we can know is to get them on record. A round robin would give them just such an opportunity.

-John Milton Cooper is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For discussion of women’s soccer equality, let’s talk about concussion

USA Today

Assistant Professor Traci Snedden from the School of Nursing: As we watch the Women’s World Cup and the sheer athleticism of these elite female players, what we don’t see is the lagging research on concussion injury in girl’s and women’s soccer. The rate of concussion among female soccer players has been called an unpublicized epidemic.

Dairy Innovation Hub should stay in state budget

Wisconsin State Journal

The $81 billion state budget the Republican-run Legislature is approving this week includes $8.8 million for research on dairy farming at UW-Madison, UW-Platteville and UW-River Falls. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is expected to — and should — issue partial vetoes to improve the Republican-proposed budget. But he should leave the Dairy Innovation Hub intact.

Editorial: Recognizing our roots

WISC-TV 3

This week, UW-Madison took some small steps to change that narrative with the dedication of a new heritage marker on Bascom Hill that recognizes the historical significance of the campus as the Ho-Chunk’s ancestral home.

Editorial: Combat Blindness International

WISC-TV 3

For 35 years Combat Blindness International, headquartered here in Madison and founded by UW ophthalmologist Dr. Suresh Chandra, has been restoring sight to more than 360,000 people in five countries.

Monkey Cage: Why Facebook is pushing Libra

The Washington Post

Facebook is issuing Libra, a new electronic currency, and everyone is rushing to explain it; perhaps the best overall explanation comes from Bloomberg’s Matt Levine. Most of the commentary focuses, unsurprisingly, on the economics. Yet there is also a very important political economy story. Here’s what you need to know about the politics of Libra.

Editorial: Birdies for Health

WISC-TV 3

The idea is simple: You make a pledge for every birdie made during the tournament to support The UW Carbone Cancer Center, American Family Children’s Hospital, Imitative to End Alzheimer’s, Department of Ophthalmology, or Transplant and UW Organ and Tissue Donation. American Family will match your donation up to $100,000.

Editorial: Freshwater is smart strategy

WISC-TV 3

In addition to addressing one of the most important human health and environmental issues of our time, creation of the Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin is a smart economic development strategy for the UW System and for the state.

Editorial: Madison’s transplant pioneer

WISC-TV 3

MADISON, Wis. – Madison certainly has its share of unsung heroes; people who have made a profound difference in the world yet remain unrecognized or at least underappreciated here in their hometown.

How Korea was divided and why the aftershocks still haunt us today

Washington Post

New missile tests in North Korea have put the region back in the spotlight. The tests portend trouble ahead for President Trump’s extremely ambitious Korean agenda no matter how much confidence he has in Kim Jung Un.

–David P. Fields is the associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin and the author of “Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea.”

Megan Waltz: UW Health remains committed to local vendors, products

Letter to the editor: I was dismayed to see Lindsay Christian’s May 16 article “UW Health shifts focus from local food” since I have been in charge of food operations for six years and there has been no shift away from using local products, nor any change in our commitment to a local spend of at least 20 percent of our total food budget.

Dairy research could be bipartisan — Donald Miner

Wisconsin State Journal

It may be that more money needs to be appropriated to research at University of Wisconsin System campuses to help the struggling dairy industry. But state Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and 27 other Republicans have taken a partisan path to address the problem.

Be prepared for life

Wilmington News Journal

Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt delivered the commencement address at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the weekend, and delivered what I thought to be a brilliant message to 2019 graduates.

Ray Cross: UW System is delivering more graduates, deserves strong state support

Wisconsin State Journal

UW System president’s column: An investment in UW System will help us continue these successes and generate more graduates — especially in high-need areas such as nursing, engineering, business, computer science, information technology and data science. Across the System, our campuses have plans to expand these vital areas through our 2019-21 state budget capacity-building initiatives.

Nerissa Nelson: UW-Stevens Point’s plan to keep majors is a pyrrhic victory

My campus, the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, has had a tumultuous year of dealing with a projected budget deficit of $8 million over the next three years. It started as an announced administrative “document/plan” to cut 13 liberal arts majors, followed by a “reduced plan” to cut six majors and tenured faculty, and then ultimately a “pulled-back plan” to not cut those majors or lay off tenured faculty.

Pete Buttigieg doesn’t speak seven languages. I know, because I do

The Daily Caller

Noted: I discussed the matter with one of the nation’s experts Dr. Dianna L. Murphy, who directs the Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She pointed out that people can have a variety of language strengths and weaknesses; and rather than treating language competency as a “switch yes or no,” learners can tell more of a story about their abilities.

Tom Still: Idealism or inevitable? Greening of America well underway

Wisconsin State Journal

The Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, part of the UW-Madison Energy Institute, launched in 2007 to focus on sustainable production of fuels and chemicals from non-edible plant materials such as corn residue, poplar and switchgrass. It is one of four such labs in the country and was recently renewed – with an increase in federal dollars – by the Trump administration.