For more than a half century, the United States has operated what might be called a “Miracle Machine.” Powered by federal investment in science and technology, the machine regularly churns out breathtaking advances.
Video: In “Two Minutes with Mitch” local radio personality Mitch Henck gives his two cents on the debate over free speech on University of Wisconsin campuses.
Being called out of one’s names is not only about calling out racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs. It is about the power and control to chart one’s own destiny.
Free speech on Wisconsin’s college campuses has been getting a lot of attention at the State Capitol recently.
Among the many examples of the Wisconsin Idea in action in our state today, one we find especially valuable is the University of Wisconsin-Madison partnership with Literacy Network to help immigrants achieve U.S. citizenship.
Letter to the editor: I am extremely proud of the Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly, which passed the Campus Free Speech Act last week. I earned my master’s degree from UW-Madison in 1973 and lived through many violent protests during my time there.
A crowd of 200 dairy-involved attendees participated in the “Dairy Summit” hosted by the University of Wisconsin held at the Alliant Energy Center June 19, 2017. A host of speakers described everything from research to milk production, and dairy marketing to the future of dairying in Wisconsin.
The Capital Times has defended campus free speech since the days when U.S. Sen. Robert M. La Follette and Capital Times founder William T. Evjue were burned in effigy by pro-World War I militarists at UW-Madison.
The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee should be commended for approving a much-needed raise for state employees — and for including University of Wisconsin System employees.
State Journal editorial from a century ago: The University of Wisconsin’s own catalog lists 27 teachers in the department of German. And it was only a short time ago when every student at the university, regardless of what course be pursued, was compelled to study German. …That compulsory regulation has been eliminated. But German is still the language urged on our students. The German department has 27 instructors compared to 25 in all other modern languages combined.
Letter to the editor from Matt Kussow, executive director of Badger Advocates.
Wisconsin’s economy is providing an interesting combination of positive and negative news.
This happens to be her last month at the helm of the Wisconsin Alumni Association, the super-active organization that serves the more than 400,000 UW-Madison alumni around the world.
Martina Kunovic is a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a visiting researcher at the Instituto Cubano de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello in Havana in 2015-16.
After thinking that interest in and excitement about massive open online courses had faded to the background of the higher education landscape, I was surprised to see a recent flurry of news media coverage of MOOCs.
Noted: Finally, Kremer is proposing to protect speakers on UW campuses by prohibiting students and faculty from protesting. In my opinion, every speaker should be heard respectfully, but responsible free speech by the audience should also not be curtailed. If, in rare instances, students or faculty see a speaker as lying, grossly misrepresenting the facts, or advocating discrimination, they should be allowed to protest, even if that means that views that Kremer might value are exposed to ridicule. That is democracy.
Noted: Jordan Ellenberg is the John D. MacArthur and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “How Not to Be Wrong.”
You’d think I’d be in favor of the “campus free speech” bills the Wisconsin Legislature is considering. I’m a strong proponent of free speech on campus, and I believe that our students benefit from being exposed to all kinds of views, even those that mock or directly attack the values they were raised with by their families.
The state’s retirement system was one of the things that brought me to Wisconsin.
Noted: That’s the conclusion of a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine identifying four Trump appointees as carriers of the disinformation virus. What makes them especially dangerous, says the author, bioethicist R. Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin law school, is that the “alternative facts” they’re purveying could influence an entire generation’s attitude toward contraception, for the worse.
A couple of weeks ago collaboration by several schools and colleges at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW System and UW Extension focused on helping every child thrive.
Noted: Insight from UW’s Tamara Jeppson, Greg Tripoli and Harold Tobin.
Noted: Erica Kanesaka Kalnay is a former early childhood teacher. She is currently a doctoral candidate in English literary studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A couple of reports from two of the University of Wisconsin’s most influential thought and research centers allow for some cautious optimism about the battle to reduce poverty in Wisconsin, while also offering evidence of the need to step up the fight.
Noted: In Wisconsin, we are fortunate to have researchers who study effective ways of reducing crime at the Remington Center at UW Law School and at Marquette University Law School.
Noted: 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. Engaged in primary care pediatrics, early literacy, medical education, and advocacy, he covers a variety of topics related to the health and well-being of children and families.
The right-wingers who control state government these days are determined to pass blatantly unconstitutional laws to limit protest on the UW’s campuses and “protect” conservative speakers from unruly protesters.
Dave Zweifel column: It’s unlikely that any of these modern-day speech police have ever bothered to read any history about protest and free speech controversies in our higher education system. It’s been the case throughout the UW’s history and in many cases, it was the conservatives who were shutting down the liberals.
The Governor’s Steering Committee on Autonomous and Connected Vehicle Testing and Deployment will advise Walker on how best to advance the testing and operation of self-driving vehicles in Wisconsin. It will include a mix of industry, technology, regulatory and academic members, and build upon the selection of the UW’s Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory as a test bed.
By the standards of the politically charged Wisconsin inhabited by UW-Madison administrators and Republican leaders of the state Legislature, the creation of a Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership is a sublime kind of genius.
Letter to the editor: UW Chancellor Becky Blank and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are fooling no one.
Letter to the editor: Anyone who thinks that the proposed Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership at UW-Madison “is a fine idea,” as Friday’s State Journal editorial contended, should read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.”
A UW-Madison research center named after Wisconsin’s longest-serving governor will be well worth its $3 million price tag if it improves the university’s frayed relationship with the Legislature.
The country’s most powerful engine of upward mobility is under assault. Public colleges have an unmatched record of lofting their students into the middle class and beyond. For decades, they have enrolled teenagers and adults from modest backgrounds, people who are often the first member of their family to attend college, and changed their trajectories.
Noted: Fewer people, especially fewer children, are living in poverty in Wisconsin than ever before. In fact, we’ve seen a “significant reduction” in poverty across our state the past several years. That’s the data presented in a new report from UW-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty.
I’m not a fan of Ann Coulter. I disagree with her on most issues and I don’t like her style. A little too nasty, even for me. If she’s coming to a venue near me, I’m not likely to be in that audience.
Quoted: “Place matters,” as UW-Madison poverty researcher Tim Smeeding puts it in the spring issue of the Stanford center’s magazine. “The poverty-generating effects of place can be reduced by moving poor children to better neighborhoods.”
Noted: Donald Downs, professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at UW-Madison, agreed that while the end goal is good, the bill clearly goes too far, and would not be held up by the courts as currently written. He also said, however, that if universities across the country “don’t get our own house in order, we’re opening the door to this.”
It’s been interesting to follow the discussion from our legislators (mostly Republicans) related to the issue of free speech on university campuses. I applaud their support of the right of people to express their opinions, no matter how offensive, without the threat of being silenced.
Scientific breakthroughs surrounding human gene editing, for instance, have moved medical treatments that seemed science fiction just a few years ago within scientists’ reach. Today, tools like CRISPR/Cas9 allow making modifications to the human genome in ways that are more efficient and safer than ever before. And the science emerges rapidly, constantly offering new venues for treating what used to be incurable diseases.The idea of editing the human genome raises questions that science alone cannot answer.
Our UW System considers undocumented students “international students” for tuition purposes; that is, they must pay three times what resident students pay, without the ability to access any federal or state financial aid.
Letter to the editor by Tishler, a UW-Madison emeritus professor of landscape architecture
Column by Rebecca Blank, chancellor, and Marsha Mailick, vice chancellor for research and graduate education at UW-Madison.
The UW System has about 180,000 students, a number that includes young adults of all stripes. It seems politics knows no boundaries when it comes to families and higher education.
Column by Bromley, a professor emeritus of applied economics at UW-Madison.
My wife, Marianne, and I are proud investors in Wisconsin’s largest economic engine: the world-class University of Wisconsin System.
UW administrators seek to guarantee that differing views can be expressed and challenged. They stumble sometimes; but we respect their efforts to ensure that, when exchanges get intense, everyone can be heard.
In short, students who will not have to show any financial need will get scholarships, the state will pay itself for some 77,000 acres of land it hasn’t been able to sell to anyone else, and money to buy more desirable land will be reduced — and taxpayers will, actually, pay for all of it.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank got a couple of tough questions about free speech during an hour-long conference call with more than 6,000 alumni Monday. Her responses were impressive and should reassure conservatives that the state’s flagship university is committed to encouraging diverse views on campus.
No one who appreciates the high value Wisconsin has historically placed on academic freedom can accept the restrictions state Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, state Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Brookfield, and their co-authors have proposed in a pair of speech-code bills that outline schemes for punishing students and restricting the ability of the UW and its administrators to take stands on major issues.
Letter to the editor: UW System has policies that protect free speech and ensure discipline for students who violate free speech. The Vos and Kremer legislation demeans one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the country.
UW-Madison is ranked No. 425. This number makes me proud because in comparison to a school such as Washington University in St. Louis (No. 1), which enrolls a higher percentage of the elite (27.1 percent) than any other school, UW represents a broad experiment in which a liberal arts education acts as an engine of social mobility.
Recent accounts of free-speech issues both on the UW-Madison campus and elsewhere throughout the country move me to write to express some perplexity over these incidents. Why, I ask myself for the umpteenth time, is protesting imitatively and predictably on such a scale regarded as a particularly effective expedient? Why not adopt a different strategy?
Column: Kim Krautkramer is now a third-year medical student at UW-Madison, pursuing a dual doctorate (M.D.-Ph.D.) in the medical scientist training program.
That liberals run American universities is never going to be a man-bites-dog news headline, but the urgent question ought to be: When are university liberals going to stand up and defend liberalism?
Racist hate speech on campus has become the de facto litmus test for free speech protections today. But racist hate speech may not be doing what progressive free speech defenders think it is doing.
For the last couple of years, one of the two biggest topics of discussion regarding college education in the U.S. has been the widespread assault against free speech by “progressives.” (The other is the rising level of student debt and the inability of many students to pay off their obligations.) Speakers who don’t toe the leftist party line are shouted down and students who don’t are apt to be accused of “hate speech” and hauled before a “bias response team.” Debate, say many leftists, should be curtailed in the interests of “fairness” and “sensitivity.”
Many legal tools are already available to campus administrators and local authorities that allow them to deal with those who disrupt speakers at campus events.
Letter to the editor: Even when they are well-intentioned, attempts by legislators to micro-manage University of Wisconsin affairs are often heavy handed or misdirected.But the bill from Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, to ensure free speech on campus seems appropriate and essentially constructive.
They are advancing speech-code legislation that Larry Dupuis, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Wisconsin chapter, correctly refers to as “unnecessarily draconian.” If Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and his compatriots get their way, the Board of Regents would be mandated to adopt policies requiring UW campuses to remain neutral on public controversies — like, one supposes, the debate over how best to protect Wisconsin dairy farmers in international trade disputes. This has the potential to impinge on academic freedom, public discourse and the ability of lobbyists for the university system to advocate for maintenance of the Wisconsin Idea, adequate funding of campuses, tuition issues and more.
