Category: Opinion

Noted: As he notes, tax law complexity inhibits the development of start-ups. Thats a shame, given the efforts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UWM, as well as elsewhere in the state, to nurture start-ups. Whats the point of trying to create new, dynamic businesses, if they are susceptible to die aborning because of our abstruse and oppressive tax laws?

Recent news reports indicate that graduating college seniors are not the only seniors facing college debt.

Like most Wisconsinites, we?re pretty proud of the University of Wisconsin System. Whether it?s in academics or athletics, the state?s public universities do a generally great job for students. But there is one ranking where we would like the University of Wisconsin-Madison to finish lower; in fact, a lot lower.

Scotland is poised to vote on the merits of its union with England, but not for the first time. (Michelle Schwarze is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.)

The political reporter?s professional toolkit keeps expanding. Journalists are using social science research, ?big data? and innovative alternative story formats to better serve their audience. Journalism education is catching up too, as Vicki Krueger and Katherine Krueger have shown here on EducationShift.

Thirteen years ago I stood in a windowless basement cafeteria at the University of Wisconsin, staring transfixed at a flickering television screen. I watched in horror as men and women leapt from the burning heights of the World Trade Center; moments later I cringed as the second tower fell. My heart sank, and I knew we were at war. Fear — an irrational fear given that I was a thousand miles away in Wisconsin — crept up my spine. I continued to watch as firefighters, police officers and ordinary citizens rushed not away, but rather toward the danger. Courage, I realized, courage would rule the day.

Noted: In Wisconsin, the minimum wage has held steady with the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for more than five years. A University of Wisconsin-Madison poll conducted earlier this summer found that more than three out of four Badger State residents support a boost in the state?s minimum wage.

Noted: The plan was developed with input from some of the best local and national experts ? including Don Sykes, the recently retired executive director of the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board; Julie Kerksick, who ran the New Hope Project in Milwaukee and W-2 for the State of Wisconsin; and Tim Smeeding, the economics professor who heads the University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty.

The UW System wants a $95 million bump in its next budget, justified with the usual mumbo-jumbo addressing various shortcomings in the system. As always, this includes increasing staff headcounts along with their compensation packages.

Common sense would tell you that when crucial educational programs are cut, people are going to make a lot of noise. But under the noise, Gov. Scott Walker was able to swiftly yet quietly eliminate a program that this state?s students are in dire need of ? the Wisconsin Covenant Scholars program….

Dear Editor: Why would the state of Wisconsin consider selling some or all of the state?s boiler plants? Would you sell your heating and cooling system for your apartment house or office building to a private party who would operate it and charge you for the heating and cooling provided?

Thanks to Dr. Murry J. Cohen for speaking out against UW-Madison?s planned monkey research in last Thursday?s guest column, “UW-Madison?s monkey experiments are doomed to fail.”

Like so many other Americans, I?ve spent the last week watching a chaotic, agonizing situation in Ferguson, Missouri. I?ve spent most of those days hoping for something better and fearing something worse. As tensions have risen between a black community set on demonstrating for its humanity and a police force bent on repressing those protests, as I watch the police and the National Guard dig in their heels, I keep wondering what the way out is. (Simon Balto is a PhD candidate in History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

The riots in Ferguson, Mo., over the shooting of Michael Brown, arrive at a particularly ironic moment?almost 50 years after the Watts riots in the summer of 1965, also spurred by one man?s encounter with law enforcement. That uprising, along with other mass urban insurrections in the 1960s, prompted a raft of riot commissions to examine why these outbreaks had occurred. What?s ironic is that they all came to the same conclusion: The riots were about far more than just the police. (Merlin Chowkwanyun is a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)

When The Times reported that the number of Advanced Placement exams taken in the Los Angeles Unified School District had hit an all-time high, I couldn?t help but wonder: Is that a good thing? AP courses help high school students gain admission to prestigious colleges, but not necessarily because of the course work. What matters is getting the AP course on the transcript.

To be honest, I never cared about birds. Then, almost nine years ago, Hurricane Katrina swallowed half the city of New Orleans, and something began to change.

Quoted: “I wouldn?t call it a hostile environment, but it?s definitely chilly,” said Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, who presented the report.

All rights come with limits and responsibilities. For example, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously noted that the right to free speech does not mean that one can falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theatre.

Noted: A study of adolescents in the Midwest by Tally Moses of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found 46 percent of participants experience ?stigmatization by family members, which often took the form of unwarranted assumptions, distrust, avoidance, pity and gossip.?

Noted: While in Madison, Professor R. Bruce Allison of the University of Wisconsin-Madison spoke to us about the relationship between humans and trees throughout history. He used his most recent book, ?If Trees Could Talk,? as a reference to guide us through Wisconsin?s tree history.

Research that deprives monkeys of their mothers is scientifically vacuous and morally repugnant.That?s why Ned Kalin?s resurrection of maternal deprivation research at UW-Madison is so controversial and wrong.

Noted: A graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, Hines is now one of three justices who have law degrees from an institution other than Harvard.

Noted: John Hoffmire is director of the Impact Bond Fund at Saïd Business School at Oxford University and directs the School of Business and Poverty at the Wisconsin School of Business at UW-Madison.

We all came to Madison for jobs at UW and found each other through our activism and volunteer work at WORT, Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative, Wisconsin Books to Prisoners and Groundwork. Just a little over a year ago, we started getting together to talk about the social landscape of our adopted town and to share our observations about the activism that grew out of the protests against Gov. Scott Walker.

I recently had the chance to visit the site of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam (LS2), which is in an early stage of construction on the Sesan River in Stung Treng province?s Sesan district. LS2 would be the first large hydropower dam built in the Mekong River Basin in Cambodia. The project is being developed by Chinese state-owned enterprise Hydrolancang, along with the Royal Group of Cambodia.

Our world is in chaos, with the slaughter of innocent people everywhere, and here in our own backyard, another kind of travesty is happening, funded by our tax dollars ? rhesus monkey research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Veterinary School….

The week after the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Act 10, which all but eliminated collective bargaining by most public employees and raised their co-pays for health insurance and pensions, it?s a good time for a follow-up question: Three years later, how much more do state employees pay for health care and pension benefits?

The opportunity to qualify for a bar examination by ?reading law? as an apprentice provides an experiential approach that may be attractive to some potential lawyers, especially those who gravitate to the field late in life. It could help those who are put off by the high cost of law school, who prefer learning by direct experience, and who need to study locally if a willing lawyer or judge mentor is available.

When a student nicknamed Cookie took his life in 2009, his name and picture were left out of the yearbook at Milwaukee?s High School of the Arts.

Given the avalanche of world-shaking news since last week, the shrug greeting the latest chapter in the long-running affirmative action saga at the University of Texas is understandable. Even the usually lively constitutional law blogosphere has had little to say about the July 15 ruling by which the federal appeals court in New Orleans once again upheld the flagship Austin school?s admissions plan.

Daniel Blocq, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been a lecturer in international law at the Netherlands Naval College and a military observer with the U.N. mission in Sudan.

I have stopped using New York Times data visualizations in my training presentations to educators and students. Don?t get me wrong. They?re spectacular. This one setting winter Olympic event finishes to music completely changed my understanding of timed events. I learned about the nightmare of balancing the federal budget. And I figured out why World Cup soccer confuses me.

It is becoming vividly clear that global warming and climate change pose unprecedented threats to humanity. The scientific evidence that these fundamental changes are due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels is rigorous, extensive, and conclusive.

Free-speech controversy is riveting higher education again. Major schools recently dis-invited graduation speakers whom activists deemed ?improper? to their notions of justice. And many institutions have begun formally to institute?or consider instituting??trigger warnings.?

I have more than 25 years of research experience with swine, avian and human influenza, and I appreciate and support the pioneering research of Yoshihiro Kawaoka and his colleagues.

The warnings mount: Without drastic action, we face a future in which antibiotics often will fail, with much unnecessary suffering and death. The usually measured British Prime Minister David Cameron warns of the coming medical “dark ages.”

Noted: David Wallinga, M.D., is director of Healthy Food Action, a network of 15,000 health professionals trying to make health the future of food and farming. Gerald Ryan, M.D., is medical director of University Health Services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.