Category: Opinion

A week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison held a candlelight vigil to mourn and commemorate the victims of that attack and others elsewhere. More than 100 Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and religiously unaffiliated students, after some moments of silence, began to comment on what had happened the week before. Despite their religious differences, there was a common thread in the short speeches that night. Every student rejected revenge and divisiveness and made a plea for the peaceful coexistence of people of all faiths. As they spoke, students acknowledged their religious differences and appealed to their common humanity.

Letter to the editor from Bruce Thomadsen, president of Wisconsin University Union.

Letter to the editor from Professor John Sharpless, and emeritus professors Donald Downs and Mary Anderson. “Top UW-Madison administrators issued a directive to all faculty and staff on Nov. 13 intended to prevent the racial confrontations that beset the University of Missouri earlier this month. Without questioning their intentions, we are concerned the statement may inhibit the free exchange of ideas on campus and that it is contrary to basic constitutional protections.”

Last year alone over seventy-three hundred people contributed over two-point-five Million dollars to more than 500 charitable organizations and causes. By the time this year’s campaign ends next Monday they’ll have done it again, mostly small gifts that add up to make life a little better for local individuals, families and communities.

Just something to think about next time somebody takes a gratuitous political shot at state workers.

The recent sighting of a Confederate flag on a construction worker’s truck on the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse campus was said to have created fear and angst and “personally offended” some students.

There may be no better example of American meritocracy than higher education, where intelligence, good grades and athletic prowess are among the prerequisites for getting into elite colleges like UW-Madison.

Letter to the editor: Students have no right to a college education. They have no right to be liked. They have no right to define their environment. No administrator should acquiesce to rude demands suggesting that they do.

Noted: Author Sergio M. Gonzalez is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His primary research focuses on the development of Latino communities in urban areas in the American Midwest, with an emphasis on the religious communities Latino immigrants developed in Milwaukee and Wisconsin throughout the 20th century. He is completing a book manuscript titled “Mexicans in Wisconsin” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press).

Growing up in a hunting family in central Wisconsin has taught me the value of traditional hunting, dealing with firearms and safety. I am far from gun shy and understand the year-round hunting culture. I don’t look toward firearms as an evil force, but as a tool to be used with great responsibility.

There’s a lot of news coming out of our college campuses these days and much of it re-raises an old question: To what degree, if any, should colleges and universities be responsive to pressing social and political issues? To my mind, the definitive answer to that question was given in 2003 by the provost of the University of Wisconsin at Madison when he addressed students who were demanding that the university take a stand on the then impending invasion of Iraq. The provost said, “The University of Wisconsin does not have a foreign policy.”

I am an American professor teaching this year at Al-Akhawayn University in Morocco and, like everyone, am horrified by the stories of escalating terror that cross our screens daily. I am also disturbed to see that as the violence escalates, the rhetoric on Islam is becoming louder and uglier. In trying to outdo Republican candidate Ben Carson who has expressed fear of having a Muslim president, Donald Trump has promised to close mosques if elected. Ayaan Hirsi Ali headlined her recent Foreign Policy piece: “Islam is a Religion of Violence.” Bill Maher wants to urge liberals to wake up about Islam after Paris attacks. Such generalizations feed into fears that most Muslims are terrorists or soon-to-be terrorists. Are they referring to all 1.57 billion people who live from Indonesia to Senegal, Kazakhstan and the U.S.? Such rhetoric is both dangerous and ignorant.

Why, in a time when Americans are becoming health and serving size conscious, is the UW Food Science Department eliminating the healthier portion size from its dairy store menu?

The NFL and football industry more generally have taken pains to portray their sport as safer in recent years. The league points to the dropping number of reported concussions. Youth leagues point to a purportedly safer tackling technique known as Heads Up. More and more often, medical examiners can be seen on the sidelines, ready to pull a concussed player from the field. The sport was once dangerous, the thinking goes, but it’s safer now.

(Video) Neil Heinen talks about the University of Wisconsin comprehensive campaign that’s aiming to review the UW’s focus on its goals and raise money to help reach those goals.

Noted: Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown distinguished professor for global leadership, history and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin. He was the E. Gordon Fox professor of history, director of the European Union Center of Excellence, and director of the Grand Strategy Program at UW-Madison from 2007-2009, associate professor at UW-Madison from 2005-2007, and assistant professor  at UW from 2001-2005.

Despite decades of public discourse and hand-wringing, the racial achievement gap persists across the country. Attention to this troubling pattern intensified once again this fall in response to the results of a new test in California — written specifically to reflect the recently implemented Common Core education standards.

The brutal shooting death of a 9-year-old boy is just the latest headline-grabbing act of gang violence on the streets of Chicago.

With higher education costs skyrocketing, Congress should be making it easier not harder to ensure students have access to an affordable college education. Yet, Senate Republicans, led by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), have twice blocked the renewal of the longest standing federal financial aid program — the Perkins Loan.

Having spent six years in Silicon Valley earlier in my career, I am a Steve Jobs fan. A new biography, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader, contains important lessons for higher education.

You may recognize me as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, a position I’ve proudly held for more than five years.

When and why do people get involved in mass violence? What pushes individuals in a precariously tense region into brutality and blood — and what can prevent such slaughter? With gut-wrenching stories reaching us daily from Syria, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, North Korea, Central African Republic, Libya, Nigeria and Congo, that urgent public policy question is being tackled by a number of academics, researchers and policymakers, including the Early Warning Project, a public prevention system for mass atrocity and genocide that combines statistical modeling with insights from an expert opinion pool. A month ago, the EWP released a detailed risk assessment for such violence.

Time Magazine reported institutions worth $2.6 trillion in assets have pledged to divest from fossil fuels. However, I am disappointed this value does not include UW-Madison’s endowment.

Since the beginning of the fall semester, I’ve received all the standard back-to-school emails from university officials, offices and organizations. “Remember to get your free flu shot,” “Scholarship application deadline approaching,” “Join our team.”

I had to wonder what Aldo Leopold would say.What would he think about allowing deer hunting at night or about letting hunters “shine” deer with bright lights to freeze them in their tracks so they can be shot more easily?The father of the conservation movement was an avid hunter but he could be tough on hunters who didn’t measure up to his ideal of the hunter’s ethic. In his seminal book, “A Sand County Almanac,” Leopold complains about hunters who kill does and young male deer then leave the carcasses to rot in the field while they pursue bigger bucks.

If we’re going to have the “guns on campus debate” – and due to warring pieces of legislation, we must – let’s at least argue the issue using accurate information. And according to that information, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus, if it were a city – and it sort of is one, like Vatican City is within Rome – would be one of the safest around.