Written by Mariel Barnes, an assistant professor with the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Her research examines everyday forms of violence against women, gender, and the politics of the welfare state.
“In order to make childbearing seem like an easy option, having more kids an easy option, you’d have to go even further than many of the states that have strong social-safety-net systems,” said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin and the author of the forthcoming “Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.”
Guest column by Donald Downs, emeritus political science professor at UW-Madison.
I feel the need to express my extreme disappointment with UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone’s decisions relating to his “negotiations” with the pro-Palestinian demonstrators whose protests so disrupted UWM campus life and the safety of its Jewish students. Their actions went far beyond “free speech” and their demands are simply outrageous.
Letter to the editor: Sometimes people may feel a certain apprehension about attending an unfamiliar place. I want to tip my hat to the exceptionally talented caring group at this location.
Letter to the editor: Standing in stark contrast to this academic wasteland is the announcement that UW Madison has, over several years now, produced more Peace Corps volunteers than any other campus in the country. This accomplishment does not happen by chance but is the product of vision and hard work by the International Division of the University, our campus recruiter, and the tireless work of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin–Madison in volunteer recruitment. Congratulations to them. They are still able to find students with hearts to serve and to inspire them to follow their dreams.
Guest column by Anusha Talwalkar, a recent graduate of the master of public health program at UW Madison.
Letter to the editor: I was behind the police line at the Commerce Building riot at UW-Madison in 1967. Crossing Bascom Hill, I had encountered small clusters of young people helping bloodied demonstrators away from the packed crowd. The police had just cleared the building of sit-in demonstrators, and around 15 officers had formed a defensive semi-circle outside the main doors.
Letter to the editor: In this global economy, more companies do business with Israel than don’t. Additionally, many of these companies develop medical and other technologies that save lives and advance human knowledge. Then there is the hypocrisy: If UW-Madison must divest in Apple and other phone makers because of its Israeli market (and use of its products by the military), are UW students going to give up their iPhones?
Letter to the editor: We of Madison for a World BEYOND War found what happened there extremely inspiring. Of the many things we witnessed, the conduct of the students was a true ray of hope in our murky future. We saw young people capably imagining & creating a better world.
The Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which was erected in late April by University of Wisconsin-Madison students who want to see an end to the killing in Gaza and Israel, was taken down last week after UW administrators and members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine reached an agreement to keep talking about student demands.
Students believe it is actually patriotic and ethical to be concerned about our taxes being used to support governments that oppress people and ethnically cleanse an indigenous population.
The demands of the anti-Israel protests on campus include “cutting all ties with Israeli institutions, including the… Mosse Graduate Exchange Fellowship.” As a member of the Faculty Committee for the George L. Mosse Program in History, which administers the exchange fellowship, I strongly oppose this demand as a threat to academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas, scholars, and students is essential for the advancement of knowledge and the fearless sifting and winnowing long championed by the University of Wisconsin.
I have been a passionate supporter of my university, but I am now going to withdraw my support. I cannot support an administration that allows uneducated, ill-informed students to make irrational and illogical demands of said administration. Demanding that UW cut all ties with Israel is beyond antisemitic.
It’s been one week since UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin called in police to forcibly clear a student protest encampment on campus. The May 1 early-morning raid on the peaceful assembly on Library Mall resulted in 34 arrests, including students and several faculty members. All but four of those arrested were processed and immediately released, while the remaining four are currently awaiting trial on charges ranging from resisting arrest to assaulting an officer.
The Wisconsin Idea (1904) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is our home grown state philosophy that education should improve government and public policy through enlightenment, far beyond the boundaries of the classroom. The freedom to read and write is thus part of our state’s DNA.
Recently, the Universities of Wisconsin paid the consulting firm Deloitte $2.8 million for “financial assessments” of several UW universities. While news coverage has focused on the financial problems outlined in these reports, the real story is that this project is being used to implement the Wisconsin Republican Party’s higher education priorities. And this is occurring even as the state enjoys a record budget surplus and a new legislative map that will, by definition, result in a more representative state government.
Letter to the editor: It’s possible to want better for innocents in Gaza than Benjamin Netanyahu’s government offers, while supporting the only liberal democracy in the region. We can be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
Letter to the editor: I think protests should focus on winning the hearts and minds of what Richard Nixon once called the “silent majority.” I would like to see more teach-ins and democratic spade-work — less chanting.
Letter to the editor: With raising tuition prices and cost of living, will the degree pay off and how many years until it is paid off? Higher tuition means an increase in loans needed for the average college student. This means that it may take longer for the loan to be paid off, and it depends on the average salary paid to fresh college graduates.
Letter to the editor: I went to the encampment at the UW to see for myself what the conditions were. A student, who identified himself as Jewish, was talking about the Oct. 7 attack on the Supernova Music Festival where hundreds of peaceful concert audience members (many who were for a two-state solution) were brutally massacred and/or taken hostage by the Hamas terrorists. Keffiyeh-wearing protesters near him began to shout at him: “Fake news,” “It didn’t really happen,” “Exaggerated by the media!”
Republican operatives and the billionaire right-wing donors who fund them have launched a fierce assault on dissent by students on campuses across the country, including UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, who are raising legitimate objections to U.S. policies regarding Israel and Palestine.
I began writing the op-ed just as Passover was beginning, the encampments at UWM and UW Madison had not started, and I didn’t want to inflame the local situation by focusing on what was happening in other states. Obviously, the situation has changed. As Jewish students are taunted on campus, as protesters shamelessly call for peace while chanting for intifada, as protesters harass students with visible Jewish clothing and symbols, I can no longer remain silent about what our students have been experiencing on Milwaukee’s campuses, and I can no longer accept the silence of university administrations. Students shouldn’t have to stage a sit-in or storm a chancellor’s residence to be heard.
Letter to the editor: Heavy-handed tactics didn’t work with the Vietnam War protests, and they will not work now. I urge leaders to be on the right side of this horrible issue.
Letter to the editor: I had the unpleasant surprise of having to pay to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue over $3,000 when I filed my taxes.
Letter to the editor: University campuses maintain a special status in society where First Amendment rights, and their extension into academic freedom, must be zealously preserved. UW-Madison maintains a robust history of free expression, which has helped shape the university into a world-class institution that substantially contributes to the vibrancy of our Dane County communities.
We are Jewish faculty, staff, and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who stand with the peaceful and righteous coalition of student activists calling for the university to divest from Israel.
Given what can feel like Vietnam-era levels of unrest at UW-Madison and other campuses nationwide, those numbers seem surprising.
Perhaps it was an example of progressive policing or Madison-centric policing or the “Madison Model.” In any case, a pro-Palestine encampment protest on UW-Madison’s Library Mall got through two overwhelmingly peaceful days and nights—full of speeches, chants, praying, reading, sharing food, card games, and studying—before police violently attempted to break it up on Wednesday morning.
If Trump continues to defy a lawful order of the court, Justice Merchan shouldn’t hesitate to use the only effective deterrent the law allows: imprisonment. John Gross is a clinical associate professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Public Defender Project.
Letter to the editor: President Jay Rothman and other Universities of Wisconsin officials have proven to be callous, disingenuous and morally bankrupt with the manner they’ve treated the citizens of Richland County.
Column by Burden, a professor of political science at UW-Madison.
Letter to the editor: I was on the UW-Madison campus during the late 1960s and witnessed firsthand the ongoing riots and protests surrounding the Vietnam War and protests over race relations.
That same year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Black students called for a campus-wide student strike until administrators agreed to 13 demands. Along with “thousands of white allies,” they held rallies, boycotted classes, marched to the state Capitol, took over lecture halls and blocked building entrances, leading the governor to activate the Wisconsin National Guard.
We, Muslim and Muslim-allied faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, affirm our solidarity with and support for UW-Madison students who — in light of Israel’s siege and attack on Gaza — are demanding that the University of Wisconsin does not show complicity with Israel’s current military actions that have killed over 34,000 Palestinians (70% of whom are women and children) and displaced a million people who are now facing famine. It is our understanding that these students are demanding that the university disclose its financial investments, divest from any American Friends Service Committee listed companies, cut ties with Israeli institutions and call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
A recent Journal Sentinel article reported how a consulting firm was paid $2.8 million to study the finances of the University of Wisconsin System (“Are UW campuses financially viable?” April 13).
Minority students will face severe consequences without DEI programming.
Police have been attempting to put an end to Mifflin for years, but at what cost?
Letter to the editor: The UW Board of Regents appears to be incapable of creative solutions. The GOP seems committed to a strategy geared toward degrading support for higher education by defunding the UW Extension and our small two- and four-year campuses that serve rural Wisconsin so well.
Column by Menzie Chinn, professor of Public Affairs and Economics in the UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs and Department of Economics.
Rethinking athletics beyond football, men’s basketball essential.
Lack of state funding leads to tuition hikes for Wisconsin residents, exacerbating existing affordability issues.
Co-authored by ssociate professor of Management and Human Resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Column by John P. Gross, a clinical associate professor at University of Wisconsin Law School and director of the Public Defender Project.
Letter to the editor: It is time for Rothman to stop fiddling and finally join Evers in forcefully saying: “Enough is enough!” UW schools are not a political threat. They are a precious statewide resource and should be treated as such.
Programs provide important financial, community support for students of color at predominately white institution.
Letter to the editor: Readers who travel east on Johnson Street toward North Park Street in Madison may be interested in this: On the south side of the corridor, two former residence halls built in 1962 adjacent to each other — Susan Burdick Davis House and Zoe Bayliss House — have recently been demolished.
Changes to FAFSA in 2024 causing delays, placing stress on high school seniors making college decisions.
Access to scholars. There are brilliant scholars whom nonacademics don’t get to engage with. So, to increase access to them, I hosted a weekly show on Instagram Live where I interviewed various academics, including Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita at University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Chris Emdin, Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education at Teachers College. You may not want to do something like that every week, but you might post clips from an academic talk or a video of an interview regularly, or at least from time to time.
Column co-authored by Asifa Quraishi-Landes, a professor of law at the UW Law School and co-founder of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers
A much needed policy for the university, but so much more can still be done.
Million dollar campaign to appease Republicans could be detrimental for marginalized students.
Column by Megan Moreno, professor of Peditatrics, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Wisconsin’s athletic director announced the men’s basketball head coach would return for another season. Was it the right choice?
Column by Jack Williams, professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Column by Erik Iverson, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
Letter to the editor: The Wisconsin women’s basketball team was fantastic Thursday night in their first postseason game in 13 years, but where were the Wisconsin cheerleaders?
Letter to the editor: Wisconsin Republican legislators, with one exception, deny the University of Wisconsin staff and programs that help individuals whose economic, cultural, historical and educational backgrounds did not give them the preparations for higher education (“DEI deal votes lead senators to reject two Evers Regent appointees,” March 12).
Letter to the editor: Rothman might do us a favor by openly owning his right-sizing plan, instead of shocking us with out-of-the-blue campus closures.
Written by Ross Milton ,an assistant professor with the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison. His research focuses on the political economy and public finance of state and local taxes and includes studies of tax limitation policies and the effects of local taxes on alternative revenue sources.
