Category: Opinion

In Tetra Tech EC, Inc. v. Wis. Dep’t of Revenue, the court has a chance to send America a message: Judging must be left to judges.

Mone is leading a partnership of nearly two-dozen colleges, universities and tech colleges in southeast Wisconsin in an unprecedented effort to respond to the Foxconn project — as well as the workforce challenges facing other Wisconsin employers. He and others agreed those challenges are forcing a lot of businesses and institutions to raise their game.

The future however is unpromising for the lesser known schools. A number of planned or actual business school closures have occurred at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Iowa, Wake Forest University, Virginia Tech, and Simmons College.

The ’60s in Madison is why I am who I am.

Column from Neil Kraus, professor and chair of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls political science department.

I did not expect to sit through a white man crooning about Syrian children longing to be held in his arms at my college commencement ceremony. But I did graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Wisconsin Idea is traditionally understood to mean the boundaries of the University of Wisconsin extend to the boundaries of the state, a philosophy that knowledge should be shared with communities in ways that directly benefit them.

There is a battle raging for the soul of America’s universities. One side, on the left, seeks to limit the range of acceptable speech to a curated set of “safe” ideas. Another side, on the right, wants to aggressively enforce the addition of other ideas to restore a balance of perspectives. Both approaches are misguided and dangerous.

At the Wisconsin Technology Council, several of the corporate members have ties to UW-Madison, either in their initial formation, or over time as research partners. Many were apples that fell close to the tree. About 300 companies have spun off the UW-Madison campus and most have planted roots within a 30-mile radius.

Reading into “current understandings” of the document would allow our constitutional rights to be sacrificed to the gods of political correctness, political expediency, and political fear.

Having separate ceremonies wasn’t about exclusion or division from the rest of campus but, rather, an emphasis on the shared experiences we had as students of color at majority-white universities. It was a shared sigh of relief that we made it despite obstacles that included hate crimes and threats, higher rates of sexual assault and the everyday reminders that there were so few of us on campus.

The creation of the new UW-Community Collaboration: The Alliance for the American Dream easily fits the “big ideas” portion of our editorial agenda for building an inclusive, growing economy in Dane County.

On July 1, University of Wisconsin Marathon County will become a campus of UW-Stevens Point, as part of a larger, UW System-wide realignment. While the restructuring will see the end of the 13-campus UW Colleges as a higher education institution, I believe it will bring educational benefits to Wausau and central Wisconsin for years to come. UW-Marshfield/Wood County also will be a part of this new three-campus partnership.

The spirit of open trade with foreign markets reflected in recent trade policies has a direct impact on the Wisconsin economy. A 2010 study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics found that foreign exports generated about 115,000 jobs in Wisconsin, and about $10.5 billion in total income to Wisconsin households.

Column by Owens, a political science professor at UW-Madison and acting director of the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership.

Important information was misstated or left out altogether in a recent opinion piece by Jonathan Anderson and David Pritchard about the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s response to requests for information on sexual harassment allegations against faculty, staff and students.

Far from generating crime, this group appears to suppress it. A groundbreaking new state-by-state study covering 1990 to 2014 by sociologists Michael Light of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ty Miller of Purdue in the journal Criminology concludes that “undocumented immigration over this period is generally associated with decreasing violence.”

Important information was misstated or left out altogether in a recent opinion piece by Jonathan Anderson and David Pritchard about UW-Madison’s response to requests for information on sexual harassment allegations against faculty, staff and students.

Imagine my surprise at finding a fair and balanced article on the recent talk by conservative commentator Dennis Prager at UW-Madison. It was a breath of fresh air among all the usual anti-Trump/anti-Walker diatribes.

If you follow the various paths of University of Wisconsin First Wave Program graduates — as teachers, social workers, attorneys and all forms of artists — these hundreds of students have made a difference in Madison, the state, and across the country.

Gordon Giampietro is qualified. He deserves a hearing and a vote by the Senate to determine whether he ought to be confirmed.

Recent displays on our very own Bascom Hill should be addressed constructively, not aggressively.

On this week’s episode of “Center Stage, with Milfred and Hands,” State Journal editorial page editor Scott Milfred and editorial cartoonist Phil Hands endorse autonomous vehicles, following a demonstration of the technology on the UW-Madison campus.

Vel Phillips, the first African-American to serve on Milwaukee’s city council, in 1962 proposed an ordinance banning racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Her aim was to end practices that prevented blacks from moving to better neighborhoods. Her proposal was defeated 18-1.

The criminal charges filed by the Wisconsin attorney general’s office against the former chancellor and vice chancellor of UW–Oshkosh have the smell of prosecutorial overreach, scapegoating and missing of the mark.

I know where my anxiety comes from. Last year, I had a paper come out (V. L. Butitta et al. Ecosphere 8, e01941; 2017). It was well received and got a lot of attention on Twitter. It was the first time I felt like I was actually doing science, not just playing a part. But then, everything died down. Sometimes I go online to get a figure from my paper, and see that there aren’t any new citations. I feel like I’m shouting into the void. (Butitta is a PhD student in limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.)

Freedom of speech not good enough excuse to target already marginalized groups.

Your editorial about the opioid crisis brought to mind the words of the great American journalist H. L. Mencken: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” (Writer is Jim Cleary of SMPH.)

Letter to the editor: I am impressed with UW’s measured and reasoned response to revelations about Ku Klux Klan activities in the 1920s. A knowledge of this local history can be a powerful weapon in combating bigotry.

MADISON, Wis. – Most thinking people knew the depiction of immigrants to this country as violent criminals was both ignorant and unfair. One need only look around one’s community to understand that. But now the fallacy of that claim is supported by research and data.

There seems to be almost nothing about which we can reach consensus in the United States. In our polarized political climate, everything feels like a wedge issue — from immigration to education to campaign finance.

But just as they’re doing now, students stood up for themselves and forced administrators into reconsidering their proposal. Students demanded more transparency in the future and proved just how important a well-rounded and truly liberal arts education is to them.

Online learning has come a long way since the turn of the millennium. It certainly hasn’t displaced traditional colleges, as its biggest proponents said it had the potential to, but it has gained widespread popularity: The number of students in the U.S. enrolled in at least one online course rose from 1.6 million in 2002 to more than 6 million in 2016.

Since 1973, State of Wisconsin and UW employees have donated nearly $77 million to umbrella charity groups and their 520 charities.

Quoted: Some researchers theorize that we can benefit from interacting with this better, shinier self. “Yes, we filter and lie by omission on Facebook,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Catalina Toma. “But we tell the truth, too. A person can’t say they just got engaged if they didn’t just get engaged.” Toma’s research has found that when people spend five minutes viewing their own Facebook profile, their feelings of self-worth are boosted. Like an Oprah-endorsed gratitude journal, Facebook’s pristine rendering of our past can remind us of what’s good in our lives.

While the state’s doctoral universities are the main sources of research activities, the 11 comprehensive campuses also are churning out ideas – including some that display commercial and company creation potential.

Our Wausau campus provides an affordable pathway to degrees at other universities throughout the UW System. Almost 60 percent of the students attending UWMC are the first in their families to attend college.

UW is making incremental improvements to locally source its food, a continued move in a positive direction.

Students must stay engaged, energized to continue recently galvanized movement of political activism.

Medication may not always be perfect solution, but luckily, UW provides many alternate resources.

While UW has made great strides in fostering an atmosphere of accessibility, there is still room for improvement when making sure that all students are given the right to an equal chance at success.