Another academic year draws to a close this month, and as it ends I have mixed emotions. I’m certainly happy for the graduates, as well as the students who’ve just completed a year of outstanding education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. At the same time, I’m concerned about the racially charged incidents that were reported on the UW–Madison campus this past semester.
The study of English literature, and literary studies more broadly, was, for the greater part of the 20th century, the crown jewel of the humanities. And from the early 1960s until his death last month, at the age of 86, Geoffrey Hartman was one of its staunchest guardians.
State Journal editorial from 1956: Recently the state Emergency Board granted $250,000 to the University of Wisconsin to be used for pay raises to professors who are being tempted by greener pastures elsewhere — pastures offering more of the long green, that is.This is a problem that a lot of schools at all levels are going through, as they fight to retain their best teachers. But it is not the whole problem by any means.
We all do stupid things when we’re young. Many of us continue to do them as we age, too. Stupid has no expiration date.
Instead of focusing on their failure to adequately investigate sexual assaults, and instead of working with the greater UW community on the racial tensions, UWPD spent six months hunting down someone addressing the problems UW has failed to address.
The MATC south campus would be very close to UW and Edgewood College in a developing residential, business and medical corridor. It would be located in neighborhoods where students, professional workers and families are thriving and is very accessible to transportation routes.
Noted: the UW-Madison Muslim Students Association’s 12th Annual Orphan Sponsorship Dinner to help orphans around the world. We thank our Muslim neighbors for their warm generosity.
If you were told that nearly half of the people on the planet had a higher risk of developing a mental health disorder, what would you do?
Mark us as seriously concerned about the impact of reductions in the levels of state funding for the University of Wisconsin System. And, for now, add that we are moderately concerned about the level of interest in a robust, public discussion of that impact.
In his April 7 op-ed “An Overheated Climate Alarm” Bjorn Lomborg targets the recent Federal Climate and Health Assessment, focusing on the balance between cold-related deaths avoided and heat-related deaths caused by climate change. He complains that the report “not once” mentions that more people die of cold than heat—a complaint that is plainly false (see the chapter on temperature). Mr. Lomborg is right that cold-related deaths will decline, but quantitatively comparing this health benefit with the health penalties of hotter weather and more heat waves is complex, as the report clearly acknowledges.
We remain in favor of Voter ID as a concept, that a person appearing at a polling place should be wiling to offer proof of identity. But we also recognize that for all law-abiding citizens 18 or older, voting is a right, affirmed with the same powerful language in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments as something to “not be denied or abridged.”
Mark us as seriously concerned about the impact of reductions in the levels of state funding for the University of Wisconsin System.
In the lead-up to the Wisconsin presidential primary last week, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton stopped by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to give what was billed as a “sober, serious” policy speech about the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a wise move for Clinton to wrap herself in the cloak of gravitas, given that she could not have matched opponent Bernie Sanders’ wild, crowded rallies in Madison.
April 12 is this year’s national Equal Pay Day — the day when, because of the gender wage gap, women’s pay for the previous year equals men’s. The gender pay gap highlighted today also means greater student loan debt burdens for women. The latest update of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) report, Graduating to a Pay Gap, finds less pay translates into women taking longer to pay off student loan debt.
Ray Cross just isn’t up to his job. Certainly, the UW System president has a tough challenge. He has multiple constituencies, and none of them are easy to please. Worse, their interests often conflict, sometimes spectacularly.
I thought the spring election last week would be hectic with the new voter ID law, since most of the voters in my ward are UW students. But I have to commend the Badger Herald, Daily Cardinal, Associated Students of Madison, WSUM student radio station and the university for getting out the information that was needed so everyone could vote.
Column: For decades, our University of Wisconsin has been carefully built block by block into one of the world’s greatest academic institutions. Now, the short-sightedness of the governor and the Legislature is threatening to knock it down. That would be an incalculable loss for our state.
UW helps to improve the human condition with its research to save lives, among other goals. Our university is going downhill, and this must be stopped.
Op-ed by Michael Wagner, an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison: From 1979-2016, James L. Baughman was an eminent historian of mass media, a world-class teacher, and a generous colleague at UW-Madison. Since Jim died of lung cancer on March 26, I’ve seen well over 400 tweets, Facebook messages and personal emails claiming “Prof. Baugh” was the best professor anyone has ever had … Baughman understood the primary purpose of the university is not job training; it is to help students learn how to practice good citizenship in our republican democracy.
Pressing a red button that says “no whining” makes light of the seriousness of these cuts. The “facts” are so dire they cannot help sound “overly dramatic” when simply stated. The public needs to hear what has happened, and they need to hear it repeatedly.
Letter to the editor: A strong case can be made that UW-Madison is the state’s No. 1 asset. Incongruously, it also is clear UW is the favorite punching bag of state politicians.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents knows that the first of two academic years under deep state budget cuts is drawing to a close.
The most obscure figure in The People v. O.J. Simpson—both the TV series and the real case—is the man who was, at least in theory, at its very center. The series finale ends with Simpson leaving his palatial home on the night of his acquittal to gaze up at a statue in his yard. The statue depicts him in his days as a football hero—strong, handsome, famous, invincible, loved—and in the show’s final moments, we watch the O.J. Simpson of October 3, 1995 contemplate a man he no longer is, and perhaps never really was.
Humans have played a key role in moving species to new locations, resulting in an exponential spread of species over the last century. Many of these nonnative species never become invasive – that is, damaging – and a few may even have positive effects on ecology or human economy. However, many, such as Asian carp in North American rivers and Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades, cause enormous ecological and economic damage.
Noted: Author Sara Goldrick-Rab is professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American dream” coming in September from University of Chicago.
States have traditionally provided funding for public colleges and universities based on a combination of the number of students enrolled and how much money they were allocated previously.
The Wisconsin presidential primaries on Tuesday will be won by the candidates who best harness Wisconsin’s politics of resentment.
Alvarez and the athletic department pulled off an ambitious coup in hockey circles, plucking Tony Granato from an NHL assistant coaching job to be the team’s new head coach and getting two coaching veterans to serve alongside him.
Students harassing each other is bad enough. When they disrespect a spiritual leader, that’s treading into deeper territory of racial insensitivity.
It’s also troublesome that this is just one of a recent string of racially charged incidents on the UW–Madison campus.
Spain has always been a difficult country for foreigners to understand. The enduring stereotypes are those crafted in the 16th and 19th centuries: The Black Legend of Spain as the cruel and intolerant land of the Inquisition was first defined by Reformation-era Protestants; and the Romantic Spain of sensuality, artistry and chivalry was invented in the first half of the 19th century by writers like Washington Irving and Prosper Mérimée.
There are a couple of reasons why we were happy to see University of Wisconsin-Madison officials aggressively respond to a string of reports of incidents of discrimination and bias. The first is obvious: the UW campus is not as inclusive and welcoming and tolerant as it could be or should be. One needs to clean one’s own house first.
Letter to the editor from Dane County equal opportunity director: Though I can understand the rationale for the UW Police to issue municipal citations rather than criminal charges against the intoxicated young man who pushed and spit on my daughter, and pushed two other young ladies in their college dorms. I question whether this student will learn anything from his affluent parents paying a few fines.
Walker has launched an attack on the University of Wisconsin that can be described only as vandalism. He initially tried to change the mission statement of the university to make it, in effect, a job training arm of Wisconsin business. He had to back off in the face of universal outrage. He then pushed through legislation to eliminate statutory tenure in the University of Wisconsin System. What remains is so-called “fake tenure,” which is subject to the will of the Board of Regents.
Letter to the editor: UW has maintained a global presence and has been considered one of the top ranked public universities for decades. We are rapidly losing that status due to the unwillingness of the majority of our elected state representatives to invest in UW and the System, and by stripping our professors of the right to academic freedom. This decision systematically allows chancellors the “right” to dismiss faculty and eliminate programs to align with Gov. Scott Walker’s policies to defund the System.
With each professor’s resignation, loss of research dollars, and loss of related jobs, the citizens of Wisconsin and UW alumni worldwide can hold Walker’s appointed Board of Regent minions accountable.
“Mr. March,” the title of the State Journal’s preview section for the NCAA basketball tournament, does Nigel Hayes a great disservice. What if he has a bad game and the Badgers lose? Is he a disappointment?
MADISON — There are 115 universities in the United States that can lay claim to an “R1” rating from the national organization that ranks research institutions, and Wisconsin is now home to two of them — the UW-Madison and the UW-Milwaukee, which joined the elite Research Level 1 list in February.
At his news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the night of several Super Tuesday victories, Republican front-runner Donald J. Trump bragged about the new voters he had drawn into to the party’s nomination process. As he explained:
John Kasich may be a favorite son in Ohio, but Donald Trump should still do well there today. Resentment in the Rust Belt is real, and Trump’s campaign capitalizes on that.
(Video) Noted: Worse are the slurs and hate-speech right here
in Madison. The heckling of a Ho-Chunk elder on the
UW campus, and the city’s tanking as the 10th worst
city for anti-Black tweets are the most recent examples.
In 1951, William F. Buckley declared the university to be a den of atheism and anti-capitalism in his book “God and Man at Yale,” launching a campaign against higher education that has helped define postwar conservatism. Judging from today’s political landscape, not much has changed. On the campaign trail, Marco Rubio called the university an “indoctrination camp,” while Ben Carson promised to deny federal funding to schools that show sharp political biases.
We just never get tired of this one. Every year the more than seventy-one hundred employees at state agencies in Dane County, the UW and UW Hospital participate in the local component of the State Employee Combined Campaign to support non-profit charities.
In 2001, I landed my job as a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was overjoyed for many reasons, including that UW-Madison is one of the best public universities in the country. I was also glad because it placed me within driving distance of my father, then in his 70s, who lives in the Twin Cities.
Noted: Donald Moynihan is a professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and chair of the Social Studies Divisional Committee.
In elevating Gard — the Badgers’ interim coach since his mentor, Bo Ryan, abruptly retired in December — to the permanent coaching position two days before the start of the Big Ten Conference tournament, Alvarez followed a tried-and-true formula for success at UW. He hired a coach who has lived and breathed Badgers basketball for decades, who brings unquestioned commitment and loyalty to the program, who fully understands how to function and win at the school.
Noted: Author Michael Collins is a professor of Public Affairs and faculty director of the Center for Financial Security, University of Wisconsin—Madison and editor of the book A Fragile Balance: Emergency Savings and Liquid Resources for Low-Income Consumers, Palgrave Macmillan.
Noted: Edgar Muciño is a Madison resident and father of two students in the Madison Metropolitan School District. Edward D. Vargas is a post-doctoral researcher at UW-Madison examining the effects of immigration policy and deportations on the health and well-being of Latino/a families.
Wisconsin lawmakers are debating a mixed bag of bills aimed at curbing how much debt college students shoulder once they graduate, a worthy bipartisan cause as the Legislature wraps up its work for this session.
Noted: Charlie Hoffmann is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For centuries discussions of tax policy centered on the collection of government revenues. As Louis XIV’s finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, famously wrote: “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” This was the received wisdom until Adam Smith pointed out in 1776 that the wealth of nations—not the wealth of governments—is what really matters. The debate about the proper ends and means of taxes has raged ever since.
On a recent Wednesday night, 30 University of Wisconsin-Madison students gathered to discuss Plato and Gandhi. They were not your typical UW undergrads, and their rich discussion did not occur in a traditional classroom.
Incurring the wrath of the professoriate, Wisconsin legislators stuck to their guns last summer and removed tenure guarantees from state statute.
In 1904, University of Wisconsin President Charles Van Hise declared, “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every home in the state.”
Noted: As strong supporters of the Madison Commons, we also love the partnership with the UW School of Journalism and the Commons, and the support of the Madison Community Foundation and MG&E.
Here’s how six people at UW-Madison’s Library Mall answered this week’s question posed by Capital Times freelancer Kevin Murphy.
Gratton is a professor of entomology at UW-Madison.
Quoted: “The best-practice thinking these days has been to start providing access to these services earlier, before children are victims of abuse or neglect and before they have to be removed from their homes,” said Ellen Smith, the child welfare training coordinator at UW-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“There is a lot of interest in supporting biological families to prevent abuse and/or out-of-home placements rather than spending all of our limited funding to pay for out-of-home care costs.”
There are 115 universities in the United States that can lay claim to an “R1” rating from the national organization that ranks research institutions, and Wisconsin is now home to two of them: UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, which joined the elite Research Level 1 list in February.
Noted: Julie Olson is an engineer at GRAEF, a Milwaukee-based engineering, planning and design firm. She received her degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Noted: Even as the nation’s economy was recovering from the Great Recession, the number of Wisconsin residents living in poverty averaged 13% — the highest since 1984, according to a trend analysis by UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.
