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Category: Opinion

Terry Sivesind: Badgers now worth watching, so act like it

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Wisconsin State Journal

Here is some historical perspective to help current UW students understand the evolution of the game day chants. The students suffered through many years of watching inept UW football teams in the 1970s. It was also the era of protests and chanting was used to communicate….all fans have a responsibility to represent UW-Madison at the highest level possible when the nation views the Badgers as a perennial Big Ten powerhouse. Students today could put their mark on UW-Madison by celebrating a national championship caliber team with new game day traditions.

Stephen L. Weber: The crisis in college football

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Capital Times

For the past 15 years I served as president of San Diego State University. I sat in meetings and participated in votes about not just the academic life of the university, but another huge aspect of university life: college sports. That experience leads me to recognize a few plain truths: College football is in a crisis; today?s system cannot fix itself. Indeed, no one on the inside of intercollegiate athletics can speak openly because too much is at stake. And taxpayers nationwide are harmed as a result. The scrutiny of the media, Congress, the Justice Department and state attorneys general is warranted ? and desperately needed ? on the Bowl Championship Series.

Chris Rickert: Pension and a paycheck? Good for them, but what about the rest of us?

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Wisconsin State Journal

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, some 14 million Americans are unemployed, 9.3 million are underemployed and 1 million have stopped looking for work because they believe there is no work to be found. But for a few lucky souls, the job market is so good ? and so lucrative ? they?d be fools not to cut their retirements short and get back to work. I?m talking about the 447 UW-Madison employees and who-knows-how-many-other public-sector workers taking advantage of the “double dip”: Retire, get yourself hired back, collect both a pension and a paycheck.

Eat shit? Fuck you!

Posted on
Badger Herald

Sorry, University of Wisconsin Athletics, but I don?t think an email is going to stop your least favorite cheer. Especially one that makes largely banal and easily refutable points. Let?s take them one at a time.

Andy Baggot: Last stand of the good ol’ WCHA

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Madison.com

If you think the realignment movement in major college football has been a circus, you should drop by this big top and grab a seat. What has happened under the tent of major college hockey since last season makes that sideshow look not only scripted, but dignified. In the past six months we?ve had the most dominant conference in the land implode and another get measured for a body bag.

Plain Talk: Ryan would send seniors back to ?poor farm?

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Capital Times

….As independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont remarked recently, ?Social Security is the most successful government program in our nation?s history. Let?s be clear. For more than 75 years, Social Security has, in good times and bad, paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American.?

Wall Street certainly cannot say that. The Social Security program, which was inspired by UW-Madison economists and the state?s vibrant progressive movement, has succeeded in keeping millions of senior citizens, widows and orphans and the disabled out of extreme poverty.

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout: Investing in higher education reaps rewards for all

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Capital Times

Investing in higher education brings dividends beyond higher salaries for graduates. More income means more tax dollars and a broader tax base, sharing the cost of public services more equitably among all. Spin-off companies and others assisted by UW research benefit the state?s economy.

UW officials remind us: Prosperous citizens use fewer public services, are generally healthier, are able to contribute to philanthropy and community nonprofits, and are more engaged in democracy and civic affairs.Investing in higher education reaps big rewards for everyone. It is an outlay we must be committed to make. Our future depends upon our investment.

Kydd: Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition is brilliant

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Los Angeles Times

Everyone knows that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? bid for statehood through the United Nations Security Council will fail. Even if the Palestinians get the nine votes needed , the United States will veto it. And yet the strategy is brilliant. Why? Because the Palestinians win even if they lose. Andrew Kydd is a professor of political science.

Bill Berry: Racing to keep up on the technological highway

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Capital Times

Covering cultural trends has long been among the jobs of news sources. So it is my duty to report on a startling finding. Several professorial-type sources tell me that many of today?s students in higher education cannot read cursive writing. This one is likely to get the ?three R?s? crowd?s undies in a bundle, but it is apparently true. I can just hear some of the current presidential candidates screeching about the end of civilization.

Attack on UW Affirmative Action is misguided

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Isthmus

Roger Clegg, president of the right-wing Center for Equal Opportunity, stood up at a downtown hotel last week to give a press conference on Affirmative Action in admissions policies at the UW-Madison. He jabbed a finger into a debate that has been festering not just on campus, but nationwide.

Commentary: Diversity Dust-Up

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WISC-TV 3

Bucky, it seems, has found himself in the middle of an old controversy made anew. Last week, the Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity released two studies showing that in 2007 and 2008 the University of Wisconsin-Madison engaged in “severe discrimination” based on race and ethnicity. African American and Latino students, the report alleges, received preferential treatment over whites and Asians in undergraduate and law school admissions processes.

Peter Wood: Mobbing for preferences

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Chronicle of Higher Education

On Tuesday, September 13, a mob of University of Wisconsin students overpowered the staff and swarmed into a room at the Madison Doubletree Hotel where Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, was giving a press conference on the release of two new reports from his organization.

Opinion: Limit researchers, respect life

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Legislation to prohibit the sale or use of body parts of aborted unborn babies for research purposes (Assembly Bill 214?/?Senate Bill 172) has raised the standard ire and arguments of University of Wisconsin researchers: Limit what we do, and we will threaten to leave the state and create a black hole in the Wisconsin economy.

Editorial: Ward welcome for one more year

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Daily Cardinal

The question surrounding Interim Chancellor David Ward?s term length recently surfaced as UW-Madison?s University Committee requested he stay an additional year. While the interim position is only allotted a single-year term during a search and screen process, members of the UW faculty argue Ward?s background, collegiate experience and national insight put him in the best position to lead UW-Madison through Wisconsin?s rocky political climate.

Plain Talk: Grothman, Nass again don?t have a clue

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Capital Times

I wish somebody could tell me it isn?t true, but I?d swear that this current crop of Republicans who control the Legislature would return us all to the failed law enforcement policies of 50 years ago.

….During the 1960s and into the early 1970s, urban law enforcement leaders throughout the country eventually discovered that it was much wiser to let people in large crowds have their say as the First Amendment allows them to do, keep the crowds within controlled areas as best as possible, and go after only those who get out of control.

Jim Yong Kim: Sharing best practices to stop binge drinking

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Capital Times

The rate of student alcohol abuse has remained unchanged for 30 years: Nearly 40 percent of 2010 U.S. college students engage in high-risk alcohol consumption. That means, unfortunately, that binge drinking is as widespread among today?s freshmen as it was for their parents? generation and potentially just as lethal. Each year, almost 2,000 U.S. college students die from alcohol-related causes. An estimated 600,000 others are injured while under the influence.

(Jim Yong Kim is president of Dartmouth College.)

Thomas Pleger: Understand history of UW System

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Wisconsin State Journal

This spring Gov. Scott Walker and former UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin proposed splitting UW-Madison off from the UW System. The plan was controversial, but it also was lost in the other contentious measures pushed through state government.The governor is currently assembling a task force to examine the structure of the UW System into the future. In all likelihood, the suggestion that UW-Madison and the UW System would be better off separate will resurface.

(Pleger is campus executive officer, dean and associate professor of anthropology and archaeology at UW-Baraboo/Sauk County.)

Research must still honor human dignity

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Respect for human dignity is essential in the authorization and conduct of scientific research, a point underscored by numerous and horrific past failures to establish or follow such protocols. Yet as a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with substantial coursework in the biological sciences, I heard the declaration from more than one of my professors that the ethical questions surrounding pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry should be “set aside and dealt with later” if there was “great potential” for medical breakthroughs.

Affirmative action faces new challenge

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

During the decades-long debate over affirmative action, many schools like UW-Madison have determined that strict reliance on grades doesn?t always result in the best applicants. Despite all the overheated rhetoric from some, it?s not really that shocking to discover some people get a break in life while others don?t.

Chris Rickert: Fight about affirmative action in school admissions all about context

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Wisconsin State Journal

The most striking thing about Tuesday?s press conference on UW-Madison?s alleged affirmative-action-driven bias against white and Asian applicants was not the loud, mildly violent protest that overran it. It was the university professor who publicly touted the rising admission rate for white students and the declining rate for blacks. This from an institution that only 11 years ago was so worried about its less-than-diverse image that it Photoshopped a black student onto an admissions catalog.

Stanley Kutler: How not to commemorate 9/11

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Capital Times

We fashionably compress our commemorations of 9/11 events into a neat triangle to include the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. But in accepting this, we terribly distort our history, for any link between 9/11, the present Afghanistan war and the Iraq war is patently false.

(Stanley Kutler, a UW-Madison professor emeritus, is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings. This column first appeared on Truthdig.com.)

Ban on fetal tissue research would be a mistake

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A bill introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature would make it a crime for Wisconsin researchers to continue using those cells, even though they have done so legally, ethically and effectively for 50 years or more.

Lawmakers who believe they are merely standing firm against abortion should think twice about the far-reaching effects of this bill on medical research and the state?s innovation economy.

Bill Berry: Soil depletion looms as potential disaster

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Capital Times

STEVENS POINT ? Autumn is at the doorstep again, and across much of the state, corn crops are bursting with promise, soybeans are yellowing out in their patient manner, alfalfa and pasture lands are lush and emerald green. Grain prices are high, boosting land values and yielding profits for farmers. In a difficult economy, agriculture seems to be thriving. That?s good news for this bedrock Wisconsin industry, at least for the short term. Not to look for clouds on a sunny day, but the words ?short-term? are important markers for some analysts.

Danielle Nierenberg and Christina Wright: Local gardens are way to go to fight hunger and obesity at same time

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Capital Times

In 1962, the University of Wisconsin created the Eagle Heights Community Garden, and it remains one of the oldest community gardens in the country. According to UW, the purpose of EHCG is to give people opportunities to enjoy nature, build community, learn about gardening, and feed their families. The garden brings together a diverse group of students, faculty, and families in the community. At last count, gardeners at EHCG spoke 60 languages.

Chris Rickert: Cellphone-charging shoes an idea for another time

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Wisconsin State Journal

At a time when Congress is considering big cuts to social programs to deal with record budget deficits, it can?t be just my personal aversion to time-sucking high-tech distractions that makes me wonder if spending taxpayer dollars on the development of a shoe-based cell-phone charger is really all that great of an idea. Last week, UW-Madison engineers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor unveiled their “reverse electrowetting” technology and its potential for recharging cellphones and other electronic devices by transferring the energy created by walking into electricity.

Heidi Fassnacht: Reflections on Sterling Hall, a thank you for opening your hearts

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Capital Times

Dear people of Madison and beyond: Forty-one years is a long time to wait to say ?thank you,? to express my gratitude for the ways, known and unknown, that you have touched my life. It has taken me this long to come to a place where I recognize the gift my life has been, and how I have not gotten here alone. Forty-one years ago, early one morning, my father was killed in the bombing of Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus.

….I may never fully know who all of you are and the many ways you have touched my life. What I can offer you is my heartfelt gratitude, and the knowledge that within even the greatest tragedy is the opportunity of the gift, even if it takes a lifetime to see it.

Marking worker’s comp

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

One hundred years ago, Wisconsin made history by enacting the first constitutionally valid worker?s compensation law. Worker?s comp was one of many innovative laws pioneered for the country by Wisconsin?s Progressive movement.

Faculty at the University of Wisconsin along with state managers and legislators gushed forth with many progressive legislative ideas, including factory safety laws, child labor laws, utility regulation and unemployment insurance. Teddy Roosevelt, the country?s Progressive in Chief, was a big fan of “The Wisconsin Idea” for public policy-making.

Tom Oates: Road to expansion may be dead end for college sports

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Madison.com

Even as the Big Ten grew from 10 to 12 schools, it was palatable because the conference expanded incrementally. And when the Big Ten couldn?t come up with anything better than Leaders and Legends for its division names, at least the opponents were familiar. If, however, Texas A&M moves from the Big 12 to the SEC as many expect it to do, decorum in college athletics will be lost forever. The resulting land grab will dramatically alter the NCAA landscape, and not for the better.

Madison360: Mantra of wealthy Republicans ? we want the rest

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Capital Times

“The brakes are off and that?s our system of government now,” observes Andrew Kersten, a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay labor historian. Kersten?s new book is titled, “The Battle for Wisconsin: Scott Walker and the Attack on the Progressive Tradition.” Kersten has been asking why wealthy donors in and out of Wisconsin seem so relentless.

New issues could hurt aims of Blue Cross health funds

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Robert Golden, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, can hardly contain his excitement when he?s asked about research financed through money set aside after nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield United of Wisconsin converted to a for-profit corporation.

“Take the Survey of the Health of Wisconsin alone, and it?s already producing a statewide databank – complete with genetic, tissue and blood samples – that will help inform public health decisions for years to come,” said Golden, who came to Wisconsin five years ago after filling a similar role at the University of North Carolina. “It?s one of the more comprehensive projects of its kind anywhere.”

Carey: Why Flagship Public Universities Should Stay Public

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Chronicle of Higher Education

Two years ago, I traveled to the University of Wisconsin at Madison to give a lecture on the obligations of flagship universities. I had recently returned from a vacation in Turkey and was thinking of the library in Topkapi Palace, where the best and brightest Christian students from throughout the Ottoman Empire were brought to study in comfort and splendor behind high walls that overlooked the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople below. As one historian said, “Theirs was pride of the most splendid and forgivable sort; for they were fitted to rule.”

Margaret Krome: PEOPLE shows the good that government can do

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Capital Times

It?s clear that a crucial path to healing historic racial injustices and overcoming current ones is to create more educational opportunities so people of color can compete in employment markets. At a time when radical forces are pushing for less funding for public schools, creative solutions are especially needed now.

So for me, last Friday was a red-letter day. Few events have so clearly showcased creative, responsive government at its best as the luncheon I attended for UW-Madison?s PEOPLE program, which stands for Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence. The program was launched in 1999 with 66 high school students from Milwaukee and has grown to engage over 1,300 students statewide, from second-graders to undergrads.

Still: Federal cuts will be felt at universities (Milwaukee Small Business Times)

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Even after the federal debt ceiling is raised, one thing is certain about federal spending over the next decade: There will be less of it than expected. To be precise, federal spending will drop by about $2.4 trillion from current estimates. That means a full range of programs, from social services to defense to academic research, are likely to feel the pinch.

State needs to show GE that it’s wanted

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

One solid building block is GE Healthcare?s relationship with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the nonprofit patenting and licensing arm for the university.

Ten years ago, the university, WARF and UW Hospitals launched intellectual property agreements that have allowed UW and company researchers to work side-by-side in Waukesha and Madison.

Tom Oates: Time for action, not talk in Big Ten

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Madison.com

CHICAGO ? When Jim Delany started the national discussion on cost-of-attendance scholarships in May, it was perceived as the Big Ten Conference commissioner trying to divert attention from the NCAA-related mess at his premier football school, Ohio State. If the proposal was a smokescreen, however, it hasn?t blown away yet. At separate media days events in the last week, Delany?s counterparts in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences trumped him by calling for far-reaching changes in the way intercollegiate sports are conducted.

The Problem With In-State Tuition

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Chronicle of Higher Education

This past April, the Colorado House Education Committee rejected a bill that would have granted the children of undocumented state residents in-state university tuition. The issue pitted those who support educational opportunity for all young Colorado residents against those more concerned about the implications of legal citizenship for the receipt of state benefits. Both parties have valid concerns, yet there were, and still are, larger issues at stake.

Gilles Bousquet: Support offered to Norwegian friends

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Wisconsin State Journal

Norway?s tragedy has struck a chord in Wisconsin, where we have historical, cultural, economic and institutional connections with a nation known for promoting peace and understanding. Our kinship with Norway is rooted in our communities and remains vital today through educational, governmental and other official relationships, as well as individual ties.

For UW-Madison, these ties are institutional and personal, with our students and scholars involved in research and exchange there, and Norwegian scholars and students coming here to study and live.

Doug Moe: Can we all agree that ‘Nail’s Tales’ needs to go?

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Wisconsin State Journal

For more than five years now, Good Doug, who always looks on the bright side, had been trying to embrace the sculpture outside Camp Randall Stadium known as “Nail?s Tales.”

“I kept thinking it would grow on me,” Good Doug said. Bad Doug, who believes it is always darkest just before it turns pitch black, hated the sculpture when it was unveiled in November 2005, and he hates it even more now.

“It grows on you,” Bad Doug said. “Like a goiter.”

Chris Rickert: An Idea whose time still is here

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Wisconsin State Journal

As a born-and-bred Illinoisan with roots in the Chicago area, I have to ask: What is this Wisconsin Idea you speak of? So far as I can tell it has something to do with Robert La Follette, or the University of Wisconsin, or clean government ? or maybe all three. Whatever it is, it has increasingly been an occasion for mourning among the more left-leaning types I?ve interviewed, especially since Gov. Scott Walker took office.

Quoted: Kathy Cramer Walsh, UW-Madison associate professor of political science.

Linda Greene: A Law Degree Is Priceless

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New York Times

A fine legal education may indeed be costly, but I reject the idea that its worth should be determined by the number of jobs available in the lucrative realms of the legal profession.

Chris Rickert: Both parties guilty in map showdowns

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Wisconsin State Journal

The Republican-controlled Legislature has passed its redistricting maps and Republican Gov. Scott Walker is set to sign them into law. The response from Democrats can be appropriately summed up by that hackneyed, old threat delivered by Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, to his GOP colleagues: “We?ll see you in court.”

Quoted: David Canon, UW-Madison professor of political science.

A Law Degree Is Priceless

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New York Times

My own decision to attend law school was based in part upon my perception, still shared by those who rush our doors, that a legal education provides an unparalleled opportunity to understand the intersection of private and public power, to explore the rationale for the organization of human society and to participate more knowledgeably and effectively in every aspect of human endeavor. A fine legal education provides an opportunity both to grasp the current arrangement of our legal order and to understand laws? limitations and shortcomings.

[A column by UW Law School professor Linda Greene]

Scott Rubin: Soglin?s keg rules go too far

Posted on
Capital Times

The additional regulations regarding ?house parties? in Madison proposed by Mayor Paul Soglin are not only an extreme infringement on personal privacy rights, but will also have a horribly adverse effect on young adults living in close proximity to campus.