Category: Opinion

The University of Wisconsin system recently took a landmark step toward weakening the institution of tenure for academic faculty. The new policy, if adopted by the board overseeing the state’s universities, would allow tenured professors to be laid off for economic reasons, or if the university decides to restructure its programs. It also would permit professors to be fired based on negative post- tenure reviews, which are conducted every five years.

Noted: Issues of tuition, room and board, grants and loans, public support and more require fundamental fixes. The whole system has become the focus of a growing body of research, some of the best being done at UW-Madison.

Letter to the editor from professor emeritus.

Letter to the editor fromBruce Thomadsen, president of the Wisconsin University Union. “Business is a bad model for a university because the goal of business is to make a profit for shareholders. The goal of a university is to educate students and produce research.”

Noted: I am heartened by the veterinary profession’s increasing involvement in this tricky situation, notably WisCARES, supported by the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, which I hope other veterinary schools will quickly follow.

I find it inconceivable that the freshman members of the University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band will not be attending the Holiday Bowl Dec. 30 in San Diego due to “financial constraints.”

2015 is surely one of the most momentous years in a long time regarding debates about the tenure, academic freedom, the Wisconsin Idea, budget cuts, etc. Yesterday’s balanced article (‘Tenure or Bust‘) by Colleen Flaherty, in Inside Higher Ed, is but the latest of a series of nuanced pieces Ms. Flaherty has produced this year about the unfolding of higher education debates in this Midwest U.S. state of 5.75 million people.

Letter to the editor: The real culprits are the legislators who made the requirements for student voting so onerous. The student ID used for voting cannot be valid for longer than a two-year period. UW-Madison issues IDs for a five-year period.

During the 1940s, at least three public universities expelled students and fired faculty who were presumed to be homosexual. The cases at Texas, Wisconsin, and Missouri open a window onto a little known aspect of the history of higher education in the United States. Although we know in a general way that homosexuals were discriminated against during the 1940s, there is scant documentation about the treatment of homosexuality on college campuses.

This evening I’ll be celebrating the achievement of William C Campbell when he receives his Nobel Prize in Stockholm. Short of being awarded oneself, it doesn’t get much better for a university president than seeing a graduate receive the greatest honour in his or her field. Campbell’s story has touched, and resonated with, people around the world, because the work for which he has been awarded – eradicating river blindness – is particularly inspirational and altruistic, and because so many places and institutions can claim him.

Letter to the editor: It is an encouraging statement from academia. Generally, pronouncements from that arena feature political correctness and demands to quash any speech which disagrees with them.

With public demonstrations banned at the COP21 conference on climate change in Paris, climate activists are taking to social media to get out their message on climate justice.

The fundamental tenets of the Every Student Succeeds Act – the successor to No Child Left Behind – are now well known. It lessens the latter’s focus on standardized test scores and shifts much policy-making power from the U.S. Education Department back to the states. But many educators may be surprised to learn what it includes about teacher preparation. There are provisions in the bill  for the establishment of teacher preparation academies – and they are written to primarily support non-traditional, non-university programs.

Noted: What a presidential candidate says on the road must square with voters back home, but some saw inconsistencies in Walker’s narrative and his political persona. While the news media in Wisconsin covered budget reductions stemming from the new state budget — including $250 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System — network and cable television showed Walker telling people in other states what he would do for them if he were elected president. His stump speeches on how his policies have made life better for residents in his home state seemed unfamiliar to those having to deal with diminished state funding under Walker’s leadership.

No. 2: There was a time not so very long ago when every serious discussion of the economic future of this state included the unassailable assertion of the University of Wisconsin–Madison as one of the most, if not the most, important economic engines in the state. Two thousand fifteen, however, was the year that notion became assailable. And Governor Scott Walker assailed away.

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.