Every so often there is an action that has a perfect reaction. And so it is for an old friend, professor Bassam Shakhashiri. He is the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Grady-Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public.
Letter to the editor from Downs, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of political science and First Amendment scholar, and Underwood, a retired Madison attorney.
Last week, Erik Iverson, the managing director of UW-Madison’s patent, licensing and research support engine, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, said WARF plans to spend $60 million over the next roughly half-dozen years or so on seed and venture funding to grow young companies.
The sight of white supremacists marching through the heart of the University of Virginia, carrying flaming Tiki torches and shouting “Jews will not replace us!” — followed by the killing of a counterprotester at a rally in downtown Charlottesville the next day — may put the brakes on state efforts to strengthen campus free speech protections.
The series does come with concerns, however. As much as I like the idea of UW and Notre Dame meeting for the first time since 1964, there is something disquieting about the Badgers playing yet another big-time non-conference opponent somewhere other than Camp Randall Stadium.
Noted: Author 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.
The rampant sexism in the tech world was put on full display this week after an internal memo from a Google software engineer went viral on the Internet. If we are to believe the memo’s author — who was fired from the company Monday — women are more prone to “neuroticism” and less likely to pursue leadership roles in the tech industry because of “biological differences.” (Marie Hicks is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.”)
Affirmative action is back in the news, as The New York Times reported that the Trump administration is taking a look at the pending case against Harvard University’s affirmative action admissions policies.
MADISON — After lawmakers finished grilling members of the Walker administration over the details of a proposed incentive package to bring Foxconn Technology Group to Wisconsin, the mood in Thursday’s public hearing audibly changed.
UW-Madison Engineering Dean Ian Robertson talked about the need for engineering graduates to fill Foxconn-related jobs, either directly or indirectly, and noted the college must add faculty to meet those demands over time.
The divide between urban and rural communities, which has existed essentially everywhere for centuries, took on a singular importance to many of us when Donald Trump was elected last November. In her new book, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, political scientist Katherine J. Cramer looks at what happened in 2016 through the lens of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s rural popularity, despite policies that would endanger his rural and working-class constituents.
Dear Editor: Introduced in April, a bill written by Rep. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, would prohibit faculty from training resident physicians in performing abortions. Critics of the proposed measure fear for the loss of UW-Madison’s national accreditation in training OBGYNs. Others fear for a future further down the line that results in decreasing access to OBGYN professionals throughout the state.
There are 75,000 graduates produced each year by the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System and the state’s private colleges and universities. That’s a likely source for some of the workers who will eventually fill Foxconn’s Wisconsin labor force. Wisconsin colleges and universities are also home to a research and development structure that rivals what can be found in most states – although it’s time to reinvest in that asset before quality wanes.
Foxconn, which makes liquid display panels for computers, televisions and other devices, also has expressed an interest in UW-Madison research, which could further expand the company’s positive economic impact across the state. This week’s announcement is exciting and welcome, given that several other states had hoped to land the technology manufacturer and its 20 million-square-foot campus on at least 1,000 acres. But Wisconsin taxpayers still need convincing that the governor’s incentive package is worth its steep price.
Emergency: You need more disposable diapers, right away. You hop into your car and trust your ride will be a safe one. Thanks to your phone’s GPS and the microchips that run it, you map out how to get to the store fast. Once there, the barcode on the package lets you accurately check out your purchase and run. Each step in this process owes a debt to the universities, researchers, students and the federal funding support that got these products and technologies rolling in the first place.
Letter to the editor: The bill proposed by Rep. Andre Jacque to prohibit UW physicians from performing abortions and training others to do so is short-sighted and punitive.
Letter to the editor: As state lawmakers push to recruit university leaders from outside academia, we should consider what it means to employ the “business model” to higher education.
More than two years after his office was created within the University of Wisconsin System and more than a year after he was hired, the czar has yet to authorize a single charter school. His office doesn’t even have a website. Education reformers can have some confidence he hasn’t just been loafing around these last 16 months, even as state education data suggest the popularity of charters could be waning.
Jul 21 each year marks Racial Harmony Day. Ho Li-Ching explores whether students should be encouraged to discuss controversial issues related to race in the classroom and what’s stopping teachers from doing so. Ho Li-Ching is president of the Singapore Association for Social Studies Education and associate professor of social studies education at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
GOP state representative Andre Jacque has introduced a bill that would bar medical residents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from learning how to perform abortions. It’s a move that would do a lot more than hurt abortion access — though that alone is a reason to oppose it. It would also chip away at women’s access to all forms of gynecological and obstetric care, particularly in the state of Wisconsin.
Celebrating 100 years of public radio.
It is good that Wisconsin lawmakers are concerned about free speech. But it makes no sense to protect free speech by limiting free speech. But that is exactly what the Wisconsin Assembly has done in approving legislation that threatens those who dare speak their mind on college campuses.
Letter to the editor: This Tuesday, July 18, there is a public hearing on a uniquely dangerous bill. This legislation if passed will do irreparable damage to the University of Wisconsin System and the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority, while attacking health care access for Wisconsin women.
The Michigan Legislature, like the U.S. Senate, is a safe space for right-wing groupthink. That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn from a recent flurry of activity on the manufactured crisis of “campus free speech” in Lansing and Washington, D.C.
It is clear that lawmakers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are attempting to achieve politically neutral college campuses in the name of “protecting” free speech — campuses where all speech is considered equally valuable, no matter how morally repugnant, intellectually empty and psychologically dangerous.
President Trump and Senate Democrats are steadfastly opposed to one another over judicial nominees. Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., are now threatening to “blue-slip” Trump’s nomination of Joan Larsen to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Other senators are making similar threats. With Republicans poised to reform the blue slip, now seems an appropriate time to discuss what it is and how it works in practice.
Letter to the editor: Any claims that UW is partisan are just reactions to something the critics don’t want to hear.
Letter to the editor: Given the high status and high salaries of many of these positions, the new preferred hiring pool would likely be heads of major corporations, who would expect CEO-type salaries when they become provosts and chancellors. This is a dangerous path.
Letter to the editor: Oscar Mayer allowed UW departments to collect tissue samples that led to innovation. An example was the use of pig heart valves to pioneer “bird cage” heart valves for humans. The company’s unpublished discoveries and inventions have been applied throughout the meat industry.
Column: Right now there there are 664 African-Americans out of 31,407 undergraduates at UW-Madison. In the entire UW System, there are 4,640 African-Americans out of 151,895 undergraduate students. Yet rather than asking why the percentage of African-American students is so alarmingly low, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is fast-tracking a bill to create safe spaces on Wisconsin campuses for right-wing purveyors of racism, misogyny and xenophobia.
Of course, Tommy Thompson deserves to be honored with a University of Wisconsin center that is named for him — and that explores his fascination with politics and the innovative policymaking that can and should extend from the electoral process. But the center must not get bogged down in the petty politics of the moment.
As a person of color studying at the overwhelmingly white University of Wisconsin-Madison, I believe policymakers also ought to hear my story and consider my experience, and the stories and experience of other students of color, before telling us whose voices are and aren’t being heard.
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.
