Recently, the University of Wisconsin System regents met and passed some astoundingly awful resolutions. First, they radically changed the process by which campus chancellors and other top-level positions are selected.
Falling enrollments at the 13 UW Colleges and mission confusion at UW Extension propelled UW President Ray Cross to embark on a reorganization of those two cornerstones of the UW System (UWS).
Noted: Advanced preparation and swift, accurate responses are essential. But the best way to prevent these attacks is through proactive public campaigns that illustrate the value of the research the institution conducts. The University of Wisconsin Madison is a leading example of institutional openness on animal research and preparedness to respond to animal-rights extremists. Eric Sandgren, former director of its Research Animals Resources Center, has established the Common Ground on Animal Research Initiative within the university and the surrounding community. The program’s goals are “creating more comprehensive, accurate and open communication about animal research” and improving research animal well-being. The initiative aims to provide communication models that accurately represent the challenges and benefits of animal research.
Kurt Bauer, the head of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, recently proposed replacing the slogan “America’s Dairyland” on state license plates with something more appropriate. That’s an idea right up there with the governor’s attempt to remove “The Wisconsin Idea” from the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin System.
Whenever I see Ku Klux Klan rallies or skinheads marching, instead of hate, I am always filled with a sense of curiosity. What do white supremacists do when they’re not white-supremacy-ing? There’s only so much time one can fill denying holocausts and soaking crosses in kerosene for nighttime activities.
This month, during a meeting at the University of Wisconsin Stout in Menomonie, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents adopted a systemwide policy that punishes student activists exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest. Specifically, the board adopted language that states students will be suspended if found to have twice engaged in violence or other disorderly conduct — neither of which have been clearly defined — that disrupts the free speech of other people. Students will be expelled if found to have done so three times.
I only remember a little of what I learned during my first days as a University of Wisconsin-Madison freshman in the late 1990s. The vegetarian chili sold in the student union’s bar tasted of beans and sawdust. The most important unwritten rule required freshmen to take blurry Polaroid pictures of ourselves seated atop the lap of the Abraham Lincoln statue at 2 a.m. And if we wanted to protest anything, we could.
Recent travels took me to the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County in Wausau, where local bright-eyed first- and second-year students were busy preparing for the future.
After reading Chris Rickert’s recent column, “50 years later, UW activists look inward,” I wondered what he would be saying about the Dow Chemical protests if they had happened yesterday. Would he be cheering or sniggering from the sidelines that kids today just don’t get it? We’ll leave that for the alternate historians, but Rickert is dead wrong about student protest.
There are far too many unanswered questions for Regents’ approval in November and implementation in July 2018. Given the business background of the Regents, it would be astounding for them to approve this major change without having fiscal projections and understanding the consequences.
We don’t agree with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions on much, but he was right when he warned last month that on college campuses “protesters are now routinely shutting down speeches and debates across the country in an effort to silence voices that insufficiently conform with their views.” And he was right to call for a “national recommitment to free speech on campus.”
Noted: This article is by Robin J. Tanner, associate professor of marketing at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
What kinds of free speech should be protected? Do some people, or some ideas, get more protection than others? How inviolable is our right to protest speech that we find offensive, or potentially an incitement to violence?
They always say that one is the loneliest number. As state superintendent for Wisconsin’s public schools and one of only two non-Scott Walker appointments on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, I know it all too well. 16-1.
UW-Rock County turned 50 years old this year, though news of a proposed merger with UW-Whitewater dampened the celebration Wednesday.
Dane County has recently been criticized for funding a study with UW-Madison that looked at the specific effects of the new photo ID law on voting patterns in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Apparently, some believe it is inappropriate to study this issue at the local level.
If you’ve thought about expending brain power to untangle the case of the UW-Madison grad student who may or may not be a racist and the UW-Madison grad student who exposed him, beware that it’s quite the rabbit hole.
After the Sterling Hall bombing, the war protests on the UW campus came to halt.
The hope is the policy change will curb the shout-downs and disruption of speakers — typically conservative or otherwise controversial speakers — whose messages are opposed by other student groups on state campuses.
Unfortunately, the current UW Board of Regents — with the notable exception of state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers — no longer recognizes this essential premise of the University of Wisconsin. They have made clear their abandonment of a commitment to sifting and winnowing, and the Wisconsin Idea that extends from it, by voting to restrict First Amendment rights on UW campuses.
While the Wisconsin Alumni Association built the park, it’s those who visit who make the park come alive.
When the 1960s are caricatured as a sex-, drugs- and rock-n-roll-fueled free-for-all, the 50th anniversary of the Dow Chemical protests at UW-Madison serve as a reminder that college students are capable of caring about international injustices and believing they can influence what their government does about them.
The Cap Times recently carried a well-written feature about student loan debt’s deleterious hold on the lives of not-so-recent college graduates.
Where were the students who didn’t show up for the “sold out” UW football game against Northwestern at Camp Randall last Saturday?
As a new student at UW-Milwaukee, I know college is an exciting time. I graduated as valedictorian from Delavan-Darien High School in May looking forward to this fall.
Restrictive gun laws not proven to decrease gun violence, disproving liberal cries for stricter regulations
UW-Stevens Point has a 123-year history of change. Evolution has been a constant since we opened our doors in 1894 as a State Normal School.
MADISON, Wis. — About as many Democrats live in Wisconsin as Republicans do. But you wouldn’t know it from the Wisconsin State Assembly, where Republicans hold 65 percent of the seats, a bigger majority than Republican legislators enjoy in conservative states like Texas and Kentucky.
MADISON, Wis. — About as many Democrats live in Wisconsin as Republicans do. But you wouldn’t know it from the Wisconsin State Assembly, where Republicans hold 65 percent of the seats, a bigger majority than Republican legislators enjoy in conservative states like Texas and Kentucky.
The work of Dr. Budge has made a significant impact on the field of transgender psychology. Her work is often lauded as being cutting edge and addressing the day-to-day challenges faced by gender diverse people.
As a longtime professor of Wisconsin constitutional law and government, I have been lamenting that Wisconsin’s constitution and institutions have been largely absent from the Wisconsin redistricting case just argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Simply put, the case should have gone through the state court system using state constitutional arguments.
UniverCITY is designed to tap the expertise on campus to help local units of government address specific issues affecting the community.
As a longtime professor of Wisconsin constitutional law and government, I have been lamenting that Wisconsin’s constitution and institutions have been largely absent from the Wisconsin redistricting case just argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Simply put, the case should have gone through the state court system using state constitutional arguments.
One in four women at UW-Madison who responded to a 2015 national survey reported having been the victim of sexual assault and misconduct. One in 10 experienced penetrative sex to which they did not consent.
Trans people live in Wisconsin, and they are valuable members of our communities. If the Wisconsin Idea drives our fine university to benefit the people of this great state, then the work at the Trans Research Lab is the Wisconsin Idea in practice.
arlier this week, professors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison made national news, including a story in the New York Times, with the claim that that nearly 17,000 potential Wisconsin voters had been “deterred” by the state’s voter-ID law. All the usual suspects responded on cue, repeating all the expected talking points, with the clerk of Milwaukee County suggesting that the survey shows that “Jim Crow laws are alive and well.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a major new case about partisan gerrymandering. The case began just days after the Nov. 8 election, when a federal court struck down a Republican-drawn legislative map in Wisconsin for being too partisan. Because of special rules for some voting rights cases, the Supreme Court is required to hear the case.
Are the Nobel prizes sexist? If they are, then perhaps some are more sexist than others. The prize for literature has been awarded to 14 women and 95 men. The peace prize has gone to 16 women and 81 men. Of the others, female laureates number 12 in medicine/physiology, four in chemistry, two in physics, and just one in economics.
Taken as a whole, just 5 per cent of the 911 winners have been female, and in our opinion pages this week, Janet Shibley Hyde, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, considers why this might be.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has never really had a front door, an obvious entry spot with a “Welcome” mat and a bowl of hard candy on a little table when you walk in. I suspect a great many folks start their visit to the ever-more-sprawling campus at the Memorial Union. But that’s really more like a rec room leading out to the patio and the backyard. Bascom Hall is a kind of elegant grand entry, but the building is primarily offices.
Column: How is it that it remains virtually unimaginable that the governor of this state, a governor confirmed three times by Wisconsin voters, cannot appear at the state’s flagship institution to address the most consequential legislation in the state’s history without a potential riot?
Column: [B}ased on my research about the skills employers seek in today’s job applicants, it is clear that Republican hostility to these courses is detrimental to Wisconsin’s ability to educate and train a competitive workforce. In fact, opposition to multicultural education in the state’s public colleges and universities will negatively impact one company in particular: Foxconn.
Republicans can and will quibble with the mostly left-leaning UW-Madison over what its professors teach, what kinds of activism its students engage in, and which speakers are welcomed to campus and which draw protests.
Imagine, for a moment, that climate change was not synonymous with doomsday scenarios, but rather presented an opportunity to radically transform society for the better. This is not an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the risks facing our climate. Rather, it is about reframing the choice we face, away from the prospect of bleak minimalism often associated with a low-carbon future.
“There still have been no known instances of humans contracting CWD, but hunters should know the new study demonstrates the risk isn’t nonexistent,” Keith Poulsen, of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told the Wisconsin State Journal last week. CWD is related to incurable illnesses, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease found in humans, which can cause dementia and death.
Universities including UW-Madison are stressing entrepreneurial skills across campus, which will help young people move promising ideas into the marketplace. Technical colleges are partnering with employers on internships and incentives for targeted fields, and trying to eliminate waiting lists for popular programs. The University of Wisconsin System must redouble its efforts to connect graduates with businesses here. And the Legislature should consider financial incentives for students who stay.
In their latest attack on the eggheads, Wisconsin Republicans have revived Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to force the University of Wisconsin System to keep track of the time professors spend teaching and to reward those “who teach more than a standard academic load.”
Among the non-fiscal items the finance committee added to the budget are: Looser qualifications for UW System leaders; A mandate for UW to report and reward the time professors spend teaching.
Let’s talk about the lack of inclusivity in a space that is supposed to be diverse and serve as a resource to those who need it: The (outdated and non-inclusive in naming, although that is a whole other issue) LGBT Campus Center.
Noted: Will Kramer is in his second year at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Noted: Patz is director of the Global Health Institute at UW-Madison
Noted: These actions were initiated based on mathematical models utilizing data generated by techniques and technologies substantially developed at UW-Madison.
Noted: Jonathan Patz, M.D., MPH, is John P Holton Chair of Health and the Environment and director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Nation’s core principles mean respect for the Constitution and rule of law, and should not be compromised.
When so many obviously intelligent and well-educated Americans claim that global warming is a “hoax”; when we seem obsessed with vilifying an entire, fourteen centuries-old religious tradition simply because of recent heinous actions of terrorists who profess to act in its name; when, nearly a century after the Scopes Trial, there is still significant public resistance to the theory of evolution, with one recent poll revealing that 34% of the population rejects evolution — over one third of the country! — and when voters elect a man so obviously unprepared and unfit to be president, I begin seriously to worry that we Americans are exhibiting greater and greater stupidity.
As freshmen, we often experience some culture shock in our first two weeks of class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For some of us, the school is bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. For others, classes are harder than we expected. But, for a lot of students, especially minority students and members of historically disadvantaged communities, the obvious lack of diversity comes as a big hit.
The bashing of academics because they are believed to be underachieving and lazy must stop.
Not quite a century ago, on January 7, 1929, newspaper readers across America were captivated by a brand-new comic strip, “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.” It offered the country its first images of space-age death rays, atomic explosions, and inter-planetary travel.
The Badger Herald will be launching its own Discover Channel this fall.
On Aug. 27, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales ordered the immediate expulsion of the head of the U.N. Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, Iván Velásquez. Within hours, the country’s Constitutional Court had blocked the move. (Rachel A. Schwartz is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.)
If you’ve held a supervisory position in the 21st century, chances are good you’ve been given this instruction by your supervisor: Document everything. Any kind of serious conflict or incident involving someone you supervise, write it down and date it, including actions taken by the company.
