Category: Opinion

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

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

“You’re the whitest black guy I know”.

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.

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.

With both sides making valid arguments, finding which one is in correct is far more difficult than we might imagine.

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.

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.

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.

On March 13, the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) announced that it will cap interest rates on microfinance loans at 18 percent per year starting April 1 in order to help growing numbers of Cambodians struggling with over-indebtedness. After this announcement, leaders and experts of the microfinance industry responded that this government intervention is merely a political gesture that will backfire and hurt the rural poor even more.

The mental health and well-being of our campus community is a top priority of University Health Services (UHS). We are continuously working to improve access to the services students need.

Our sexual assault agenda item is another issue that could be affected by budget decisions here and in Washington. In particular we’re concerned about a Walker budget proposal that could result in cuts to the services the Rape Crisis Center offers on the UW-Madison campus.

One of the biggest things college kids have to adjust to is the need for more effective time management skills.

“Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people,” President Trump said in his speech to Congress last month, after summoning a list of technological triumphs from America’s past. “Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us,” and “American footprints on distant worlds.”

With his proposed cuts in federal research and development spending, President Donald Trump risks harming a priority he puts at the top of his own list – national security.

On March 21, the rusty-patched bumble bee, Bombus affinis, officially became the first bumble bee listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. We must take action now to prevent the extinction of the rusty-patched and other imperiled bumble bees and foster native pollinators to maintain agricultural productivity and healthy ecosystems. It is still found in southern Wisconsin, including at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, where our restored prairies, savannas, and woodlands provide the diverse native plant habitat they need to survive.