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.
Both UW-Madison and Edgewood College have joined Madison College as partners in the Madison School District program to get high school students thinking about college and career possibilities earlier and more strategically.
Noted: To find out, I got in touch with Prof. Steven C. Deller at the University of Wisconsin-Madison-Extension, who has followed the state’s economy closely and who dug up a wide range of data for me to review. I also took a close look at a recent Politifact Wisconsin report by Tom Kertscher that rated Walker’s statement — “Wisconsin’s economy is in the best shape it’s been since 2000.” — as only half true.
“You’re the whitest black guy I know”.
A few weeks ago I accomplished one of my dreams, successfully defending my Ph.D. dissertation in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a goal I didn’t even realize I could have as a high school student. I grew up on a farm near Marathon City in central Wisconsin. My roots are working-class — Dad grows ginseng and Mom works in a cheese factory.
Columnist: Freedom of speech includes both sides.
The U.S. corporate income tax wastes resources: avoidance distorts business decisions, compliance imposes administrative costs, and very interested parties fight vigorously over its details. Its complexity enables some profitable corporations to avoid taxes altogether and it increasingly provides a smaller share of federal revenue, falling from about one-third in the 1950s to about a tenth today. Its complexity obscures transparency and provides opportunity for various interests to seek and obtain favorable treatment.
Netflix’s new talk show, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” debuted the night before people around the world joined together to demonstrate and March for Science. Many have lauded the timing and relevance of the show, featuring the famous “Science Guy” as its host, because it aims to myth-bust and debunk anti-scientific claims in an alternative-fact era.
Since the Virginia Tech shooting 10 years ago, more Americans are speaking up for strong gun policies across our nation. But we have miles to go in terms of reducing gun deaths and injuries that occur every day in cities, towns and neighborhoods.
Dear Editor: In his op-ed, “UW doesn’t need state law to ensure free speech,”Tom Loftus raises an important point about the problems that can arise with legislative intervention regarding the internal decisions of higher education. Academic freedom partly entails sufficient institutional autonomy.
Driving me to ballet, my mom would describe how she expected the world would have mirrored “The Jetsons” by then — a futuristic utopia with breakfast at the push of a button and families buzzing around in spaceships. Stuck in traffic, we laughed. No flying cars in sight.
Ravi Kalla got his master’s degrees in engineering from UW-Madison and founded Symphony Corp., a health information company that employs a couple of hundred people in Madison.
With both sides making valid arguments, finding which one is in correct is far more difficult than we might imagine.
Letter to the editor: The state of Arizona has a statutory prohibition very similar to my bill which has been in place since 2011. Neither of Arizona’s state medical schools have lost their accreditation, despite the same sort of claims to that end as made by Dean Golden.
The mix of activities and programs and the amount of funding varies by campus because students decide for themselves what to support.
These fees fund what we call “campus life,” as they extend and enhance the college experience in valuable ways, especially on smaller UW campuses such as UW-Marathon County. Making allocable segregated fees optional would very likely devastate the programs they support and reduce, if not eliminate, extracurricular opportunities to live and learn on our campuses.
Letter to the editor from Robert Golden, dean UW School of Medicine and Public Health and chair of the board, UW Health.
Letter to the editor: The University of Wisconsin is a vital resource for all Wisconsinites. Through educating our citizens and conducting important research, the university lays the foundation for a bright future for Wisconsin. While doing so, it creates thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of income. But because of budget cuts over the past decades, it has become increasingly difficult for young people to afford a UW education, and the university has slipped out of the top five research institutions in the country. To secure Wisconsin’s future, more money must be allocated to the University of Wisconsin.
Letter to the Editor: Speakers at open forum resorting to personal attacks distracted from productive dialogue
Serena Williams knows the power of language. She understands the brawn of a single word, the chasm between being anointed “greatest of all time” and “greatest female of all time.” This linguistic perception extends beyond defense of her titles; it’s part of how Williams moves in the world.
Letter to the editor from former ambassador to Norway, Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly and member of the UW Board of Regents.
By taking away UW’s family planning rotation, Jacque and Kapenga would be ensuring that OB/GYNs who train in Wisconsin are receiving substandard training. I urge every one of their constituents to let them know that the women of Wisconsin deserve better.
Letter intended to help readers better understand the genesis of Erika Gallagher’s research paper, its methodology, and its aims.
Letter to the editor: It strikes me as very disturbing to see what should be bastions of liberal thinking and freedom of expression turn into conservative, censored, restrictive quagmires.
I had no idea. You might not either.
Skyrocketing premiums, lack of choice in insurance leave Americans with less than they deserve.
As the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch were getting underway, the University of Wisconsin philosopher J. Paul Kelleher explored, in Vox, an important aspect of Gorsuch’s view of the world. Gorsuch has praised the late Justice Scalia’s “originalist” approach to interpreting the Constitution. But he has also been influenced by the concept of “natural law” — and even studied under a famous natural law theorist at Oxford. In this excerpt from that Vox piece, Kelleher explains natural law theory, and why it’s important for the senators voting on Gorsuch to consider its implications:
It is an unprecedented time in a nation’s political history. A neophyte politician — a man famous for lowbrow TV antics who has never held political office — is vying to become president. He feeds on simmering discontent about the corruption of the political establishment and mainstream politicians. Backed by extreme right-wing elements, he makes vague promises and trumpets his lack of political experience as a reason to vote for him. His competition is a former first lady married to a left-leaning ex-president. She is an altogether polarizing figure considered by a large portion of the electorate to be deeply corrupt.
Column by Andrew Merluzzi, a Ph.D./MPA candidate in neuroscience and public policy at UW-Madison.
In 2016, something extraordinary happened in the politics of diverse countries around the world. With surprising speed and simultaneity, a new generation of populist leaders emerged from the margins of nominally democratic nations to win power. In doing so, they gave voice, often in virulent fashion, to public concerns about the social costs of globalization.
