Category: Opinion

Seems to me that the clowns who wore a Barack Obama costume with a noose attached to it to a Badgers game this fall could use a course that explores the issue of racism. But GOP legislators, with Rep. Dave Murphy of Greenville leading the charge, think that a University of Wisconsin-Madison course dealing with racism and titled “The Problem of Whiteness” should be canceled and the professor teaching it fired.

If I were Santa Claus, my Christmas gifts to Republican state Rep. Dave Murphy and Republican state Sen. Steve Nass would be vouchers to enroll in the UW-Madison class “The Problem of Whiteness.”

The University of Wisconsin in Madison has always been a bit strange. I ought to know. I was there during the wave of radicalism that crested in the Sixties; I watched as demonstrators carrying North Vietnamese flags stormed the school’s administration buildings, burned this country’s flag and finally closed the place down to protest the Vietnam War and just about everything else Americans value.

Letter to the editor: Some things never change: taxes, gravity and the annual attack by Republican legislators on university course content.

Letter to the editor: Once again, UW-Madison has drawn the ire of a state legislator over the content of one of its courses, this one entitled “The Problem of Whiteness.” Judging by its description and reading list, this course sounds more like ideological brainwashing (based on the shaky premise that every institution and white citizen in America is permeated by racism) than an exercise in critical inquiry.

Sen. Steve Nass is developing a reputation for acting more like the Thought Police than a legislator in his dealings with UW-Madison.

Column by Caroline Levine, former chair of the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin State Journal editorial: A chief asset is our university system. About 4,500 foreign students attend UW-Madison. Statewide, the total is more than twice as large. That’s brainpower that could fill and create jobs in the state. One of every eight STEM workers in Wisconsin with an advanced degree is already an immigrant.

Letter to the editor: My dilemma now is: I’m having trouble making my (fairly meager) annual contribution to the UW Foundation or any other UW-related fund.My feeling is, with people like budget-cutting Gov. Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson and Reince Priebus as the state’s standard-bearers, and Wisconsin voting red, don’t come around to blue-state outsiders like me to make up the budget difference. I wonder if other alumni feel the same way?

There’s an inherent dilemma in effectively managing cybersecurity: IT organizations must dedicate the time and focus required for long-term strategic planning while maintaining the agility to meet evolving threats and take advantage of emerging technologies. Add in the ongoing need to review and revise strategic plans to reflect those changing risk and technology landscapes, and the task can seem herculean.

Choosing where to go to college is a huge choice. It’s an even bigger deal for me because of the amount of debt I’ll be taking on.

It is not obvious to me that Chinese leaders are very angry over President-elect Donald J. Trump’s phone call to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. It’s not even obvious to me that Taiwan is a top priority for the Chinese Communist Party, but the United States is.

It’s slow going, but the campaign to highlight censorship on campus may be getting somewhere. That’s the message of a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), which tracks the speech bullies in academia.

State legislators should fully support the moderate and reasonable budget request submitted by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently slid two spots in the national rankings for total research funding. The shift is a troubling indicator for our state’s economic future. While this prestigious flagship university is certainly capable of a rebound, these are signs of things to come and no one should be surprised.

The conservative website, professorwatchlist.org, claims its list comes from credible sources, but the website’s entry portraying a UW-Whitewater professor as a left-wing radical smacks of fake news.

State lawmakers should fully support the moderate and reasonable budget request submitted by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.

“Person on the street” interviews.

Letter to the editor: Players participating in this sort of activity need to understand it’s a protest witnessed only by their teammates, since the television network has no interest in being the conduit for their “statement” to the viewing public.

No insult is too marginal, anonymous or stupid, apparently, to garner the condemnation of some of Madison’s brightest minds, who emphasize the need for a welcoming campus “climate,” emotionally safe for students.

Thanks to the efforts of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, a recount is underway in Wisconsin. It is highly unlikely to change the outcome — as Hillary Clinton’s campaign has stated — but it is much more likely to overturn some conventional wisdom about counting votes. In particular, we may learn, yet again, that computers are better than humans at counting ballots.

Letter to the editor: A protest about very real racial injustices should not be interpreted as unpatriotic. It shows that Hayes cares about the direction this country is going. I would call that good citizenship, especially when it has required such bravery.

Letter to the editor: As a city taxpayer, I question the spending of $160,000 for a project that is essentially a gift to UW. The universtiy surely has resources (art students or instructors who could create a sculpture for a lot less) or finances to get their own public art.

No American principle is more important than the right of dissent against what is percieved as an unjust government.

As a community of college-educated citizens, we are doing ourselves a disservice if we are not informed in the field of environmental sustainability. The environment provides us with all of the base resources we need to survive. Humans will never be able to synthetically produce all the goods and services that the environment gives us, and yet we are destroying it as though we are losing nothing; in fact, we are losing everything.

Westman is professor emeritus of psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Thumbs up to study of voter ID law’s effects. Speculation is swirling about the effects of Wisconsin’s voter ID law on election turnout.

I grew up in Madison, as did my father. I now live in California, but I often thought my children might attend UW-Madison.

Over the past several years, college tuition has been a hot topic. Millennials are living at home following graduation because they cannot pay off their student loans and they are putting off purchases such as homes.

Of course, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States caused anxieties among nations in the Indo-Pacific which have been threatened by an expansionist China seeking regional predominance, nations which therefore seek help from the U.S. government. These governments do not want the U.S. government, however, to run an anti-China containment policy. Their regional resistance to a hostile Chinese hegemony is far more nuanced than that. The big question is whether Donald Trump is capable of such nuance.

These are uncertain times we live in post-election and that uncertainty extends to our relationships with the rest of world.

We decided to wait until after the election to begin editorializing in support of the University of Wisconsin’s request for an increase in state funding in the upcoming budget.

UW-Madison leaders have got to be chagrined at how easily it would have been to avoid the crisis sparked by a pair of clueless football fans at Camp Randall Stadium two days before Halloween.