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.”
Dear Editor: The Kochs and Koch Industries have such an insidious hold on national conservatism that it is disingenuous for any responsible person at UW to say Koch sponsorship doesn’t matter. When the Kochs are writing the playbook for national politics, especially gubernatorial and legislative policies, does anyone see a connection between recent defunding of the university system and the allure of this lucrative sports package?
Here’s how six people on the UW-Madison campus answered this week’s question posed by Capital Times freelancer Kevin Murphy.
University of Wisconsin-Madison officials recently announced that they will not change student identification cards, also known as Wiscards, to be compliant with state voter ID laws. This means that in order to cast a ballot on election day, students who are not Wisconsin residents will have to go to Union South to obtain a separate voter ID. The university has said it will take steps to expand access by offering students a free voter ID card when they obtain their Wiscard, and by continuing a campus-wide effort to publicize the availability of these cards.
Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Educational Policy Studies for the University of Wisconsin.
There are a lot of important contributions to our world for which the University of Wisconsin-Madison is responsible that tend to get lost in the political policy debates.
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.
The issue of violence and mass shootings in this country is one that needs to be addressed. However, would allowing students to carry guns on campus actually decrease the chances of further gun violence, or would it lead to further tragedy?
We have a sexual assault problem. By now, you’ve probably seen or heard of the statistics from a recent national survey on campus climate: More than one in four female undergraduate students at UW-Madison report having been sexually assaulted in college. It’s a startling statistic, but sadly, is this new information?
There’s a lot of bad blood between stakeholders in our higher education system. There is tension between the Republicans who control the state Legislature and University of Wisconsin-System leaders, between the Board of Regents and the faculty, and between rural residents and the bigger schools, particularly UW-Madison.
Noted: Through the humanities, the students [in the Odyssey Project] earn college credits, gain confidence in their abilities to succeed, and an opportunity to find a career path. In other words, they find hope.
There’s a gathering next Thursday night at the University Club on campus for those interested in supporting the Odyssey Project. We think it is so worthy of support.
It seems to us that some of the most successful strategies to help people who are struggling, who are dealing with some of life’s biggest challenges, involve meeting folks at the most individual and personalized level possible. In others words, meeting with them one by one.
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.
Genome editing, 3-D printing and robotics — these sound like subjects for doctoral students or headlines for a conference of tech savvy entrepreneurs. And they often are. They also are a slice of the activities planned for the fifth annual Wisconsin Science Festival, taking place in 36 communities across Wisconsin on Oct. 22-25, for people of every age and background.
We, the undersigned collection of instructors from colleges and universities in the city of Milwaukee, feel compelled to speak out against the bill recently proposed by Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) and Sen. Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg).
On Oct. 12, it was announced that state legislators Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, and Sen. Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostberg, circulated legislation that would revoke the exception to Wisconsin’s concealed carry law that allows the University of Wisconsin System and technical colleges to ban concealed carry within campus buildings.
Genome editing, 3-D printing and robotics — these sound like subjects for doctoral students or headlines for a conference of tech savvy entrepreneurs. And they often are. They also are a slice of the activities planned for the fifth annual Wisconsin Science Festival, taking place in 36 communities across Wisconsin on Oct. 22-25, for people of every age and background.
The National Rifle Association and its supplicants in legislatures around the country and the U.S. Congress have a ready and facile answer for the problem of gun violence in the United States:
The National Rifle Association and its supplicants in legislatures around the country and the U.S. Congress have a ready and facile answer for the problem of gun violence in the United States: More guns.
UW-Madison is touting the results of a survey that show only 5.9 percent of the liberal arts class of 2012-13 is unemployed and that a plurality of those in the workforce make between $30,000 to $40,000 a year.
A US federal court has found that Apple infringed a patent held by the patenting arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The patent describes a mechanism that could be used in speeding up processors and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), who own the patent, claimed that Apple has used this technology in the processors for its recent iPhones and iPads.
Thank you to the Star Tribune for bringing critical attention to the issue of farm-work injuries and deaths in Minnesota over the last decade (“Tragic Harvest,” Oct 4-7). I began my career in farm safety 30 years ago, and spent almost 18 years as the agricultural safety and health specialist in Minnesota, leaving to become an associate dean in Wisconsin in 2008.
Column form Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, a liberal research, advocacy and communications organization dedicated to fighting for a state with equal economic opportunity for all.
We all thought it was a miracle when the Wisconsin Badgers beat Kentucky in the Final Four. Legislators – both Republican and Democrat – couldn’t wait to honor the University of Wisconsin basketball team.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison. The words “of Wisconsin” are right there in the name, just in case anyone needed reminding that the UW System schools are funded by the taxpayers of Wisconsin primarily to serve students from the Badger State.
Column from W. Lee Hansen, professor emeritus, economics, UW–Madison
As more and more videos are released by the Center for Medical Progress, the prohibition of the sale of aborted baby parts is a critical issue for Wisconsin, and for the nation. Now is the time to end the victimization of the unborn for profit, especially when they are dismembered in the womb for the harvesting of their organs.
Noted: Earlier this week, University of Wisconsin-Madison public affairs professor Donald Moynihan wrote that he hoped the new civil service reforms wouldn’t become a new Act 10. According to Moynihan, the approach Walker is taking in supporting the civil service modernization bill is “echoing the divisive tactics of Act 10.”
We all thought it was a miracle when the Badgers beat Kentucky in the Final Four. Legislators — both Republicans and Democrats — couldn’t wait to honor the University of Wisconsin basketball team. But the real miracles are happening in the labs at UW, at the Waisman Center, at Research Park, and across Wisconsin.
Noted: A study from the University of Wisconsin found that a person’s chances at a callback interview for an entry-level job dropped by 50% when that applicant had a criminal history. And much like the criminal justice system itself, re-entry employment discrimination has a disparate impact on Americans of color.
That same study found that while 17% of whites with a criminal record were given a call back, only 5% of African Americans were given that same opportunity to continue in the interview process.
[The study in question is “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” a 2002 sociology dissertation by Devah Pager later published in the American Journal of Sociology. Pager is now a professor at Harvard.]
A Catholic, a Jesuit and a scientist walk into a bar. What do they have to talk about? And just how do those conversations go?
State spending on public higher education has been in a free fall since the Great Recession. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2013-14, average state support for higher education was 23 percent less than it was prior to the recession. For many colleges and universities, reductions in state spending have left sizable budgetary holes that cannot be filled exclusively with spending cuts.
Studies have long shown that a college student’s odds of achieving financial security and a better quality of life improve when he or she earns a degree.
Is the Republican drive to limit research using fetal tissue a product of the gerrymandered Wisconsin Legislature? Republicans have a partisan lock on the Legislature thanks to boundary lines they drew in 2011.
Republicans in the state Legislature apparently think they are making a principled stand against abortions, but the impact of their proposed legislation to outlaw research on tissue from aborted fetuses would probably do little to deter abortions and would very likely be extremely damaging to the University of Wisconsin’s future as a research institution.
Since the economic downturn signaled by the fall of Lehman Brothers, law practice has become more competitive. Firms have failed, they are hiring fewer entry-level lawyers and, as a result, student demand for legal education has plummeted. According to the Law School Admissions Council, the organization that administers the LSAT, the number of students taking the exams was at an all-time high during the 2009-2010 academic year — 171,514 — and dropped to 101,689 in 2014-2015. The 205 American Bar Association-approved law schools are now competing for the best students in this shrunken pool.
He can start by rejecting an unnecessary and purely ideological attack on UW-Madison research that Chancellor Rebecca Blank warns would be a “direct hit” to her institution’s reputation — much worse than the $250 million the governor and Republican-run Legislature cut from the Madison campus and other University of Wisconsin System schools this summer.
Before Wisconsin Badgers running back Melvin Gordon completed his then NCAA record-setting 408-yard rushing performance, the Nov. 15, 2014 Wisconsin-Nebraska football game in Madison was interrupted for a special announcement: University of Wisconsin alumni John and Tashia Morgridge would match up to $100 million in donations made by others to UW-Madison.
Service workers are proud to work at UW and strive to do excellent work, but are easily forgotten. They, too, would like to receive some acknowledgement and reward for their work.
In his column last Sunday, Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, R-New Berlin, proposed replacing the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board with a partisan model based on the Federal Elections Commission … Whether the state’s campaign finance laws or election rules ought to be changed is separate from the structure of the GAB, but they have unfortunately been conflated. Now that the busy budget season is complete, the Legislature has an opportunity to consider some helpful reforms to state election laws.
Opinion column on faculty tenure issue.
It’s tempting to look at the success of UW-Madison and the Madison area and conclude that Milwaukee has somehow missed the R&D boat that carries metropolitan regions to warmer economic ports. That’s only true if the region fails to work together in the years ahead.
One of the places where Madison makes a singular contribution to a better world is through the work of the Combat Blindness Foundation, founded by UW Opthamologist Dr. Suresh Chandra. The Foundation is a world leader restoring eyesight to people in developing countries. It is an extraordinary organization doing extraordinary work.
This past Saturday, September 12, following an announcement in President Obama’s weekly address, the US Department of Education released its College Scorecard.
National attention on issues facing boys and men of color has been elevated in the wake of My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s initiative to improve life outcomes for boys and men of color in the United States.
[Neil Heinen op-ed] The UW Madison’s Big Read program is meant to be a shared experience on campus of reading a selected book together. This year, five thousand students who attended Chancellor Becky Blank’s Convocation prior to the start of classes each received a copy of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It’s the seventh year of the common book program.
The UW Madison’s Big Read program is meant to be a shared experience on campus of reading a selected book together. This year, five thousand students who attended Chancellor Becky Blank’s Convocation prior to the start of classes each received a copy of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It’s the seventh year of the common book program.
MULTIPLE TIMES OVER the past few years we have expressed concern about Wisconsin state government’s declining support for the University of Wisconsin system. The percentage of student education costs paid by the state — the same thing is happening all around the country, by the way — has been declining for years, while the percentage burdening families and students has risen rapidly.
State Journal editorial looks back at the hubbub over the last major renovation to the beloved Memorial Union Terrace.
Opinion column: The University of Wisconsin System’s new online “accountability dashboard” includes useful information about enrollment, costs, graduation rates and where students come from. It can tell you whether professors are paid competitively and how the System contributes to economic development — both common talking point in the System’s quest for more state money. But among its many data sets — designed to show students, parents, lawmakers and the public what they’re getting for their billions in tax and tuition dollars — there’s nothing to indicate whether UW graduates get well-paying jobs in their fields.
The scurrilous attacks on Planned Parenthood — based on hidden-camera videos falsely purporting to show that it illegally sells fetal issue — have turned into attacks on fetal tissue research in Congress and in several state legislatures.Various bills now threaten to curtail or eliminate research that has already benefited millions of Americans and is poised to benefit many more.
Every once in a while research and advancement of knowledge at the University of Wisconsin can leave one in awe. It has again this week with the announcement of the UW-led discovery of fossils being described as a new species of human.
Prominent bioethicist, R. Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin, notes the campaign of distorted videos mounted against Planned Parenthood by the inaptly named Center for Medical Progress aims to depict fetal tissue research as the unholy beneficiary of induced abortions. It’s a convenient target, for there’s no question that fetal tissue research exists, and that some of the tissue comes from abortions. But that’s where the reality ends and the sophistry begins.
Noted: Authors Jay Smith is chairman of Teel Plastics Inc. and the president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Kevin Conroy is chairman and CEO of Exact Sciences Corp. Both are members of the Board of Visitors for the Waisman Center at UW-Madison.
The numbers speak for themselves: starting this year, thousands of students will be affected. But this is not the end of the line.
Though Gov. Scott Walker’s name is etched into the financial paperwork, a name on paper cannot, and will not, shut down a democratic laboratory. As students, when we move forward, our university moves forward. Possessing the ability to adapt to a new sociopolitical climate is a fundamental aspect of belonging to a progressive institution. So, again …
Now what?
The answer is dependent on us, the student body.
Noted: It was impossible to miss the sense of apprehension over misguided politics like the proposed ban on fetal tissue use, or the terrible risks involved in devaluing the University of Wisconsin. But these issues too served to focus the vision for the future that is being created along East Washington Avenue, at the UW Research Park, Epic and elsewhere.
Column from Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now and One Wisconsin Institute, progressive research, advocacy and communication organizations.
Reverend Mitchell’s comment, taken irresponsibly out of context, offered that these arrests are predicated on the poverty in which three out of every four black Madison youth live. While large insured entities can cover the fiscal loss, the real cost is to Madisonians, as the homes they return to after arrest are primarily within black communities.
Letter to the editor from W. Lee Hansen, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This column ran first on the National Association of Scholars website.
Respect for human dignity is essential in the performance of scientific research. As a University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate in the Medical Scholars Program, I heard a declaration from more than one professor that ethical questions about experimentation could be set aside and dealt with later as long as there was great potential for medical breakthroughs.
