Category: Opinion

Chancellor Biddy Martin recently made news by rearranging her staff following the departure of former Chancellor John Wileyâ??s top aides, Casey Nagy and Deb Lauder, as well as by establishing a relationship with the controversial Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, a lobby Wiley opposed for its economic and political stances.

When Herb Heneman received a lifetime achievement award in Chicago last June for his work in human resource research, he walked to the podium and thanked his colleagues and his family, expressing what he called his “deepest gratitude.”
But then Heneman, 64, an emeritus professor of Management and Human Resources in the School of Business at UW-Madison, said he wanted to thank a second family.

The critique of China in Africa as neo-colonialism is not the total truth and omits that China could trigger an African rise out of poverty. Indeed, World Bank figures already show that Chinese investments have sped Africaâ??s pace of growth

That Chinaâ??s a superpower in Africa was suddenly, painfully apparent to European leaders in 2006.

Author: Edward Friedman is a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison

The Onion turned 20 this year, and Steve Hannah, its CEO, turned 60, but nobody is looking back. There is no time for that.
As one of Hannah’s talented young colleagues said, “Everybody celebrates 20 years. We’ll celebrate at 22.”

President George W. Bush was hoping to calm financial markets and the American people when he addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce early Friday morning, yet he still felt compelled to express discomfort with his own administration’s Wall Street bailout.

“I know many Americans have reservations about the government’s approach, especially about allowing the government to hold shares in private banks,” Bush said. “As a strong believer in free markets, I would oppose such measures under ordinary circumstances. But these are not ordinary circumstances. We took this measure as a last resort.

Author: Colleen A. Dunlavy teaches the history of capitalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Forgiveness” is not a word that has much traction in American society right now. “Anger” and “blame” and “retribution” are much more in vogue.
Wisconsin-Madison, started the International Forgiveness Institute here in 1994 to build on the pioneering social science research he had done.

The American public does not seem to be in a mood to talk about forgiveness when it comes to the economic meltdown.

….Madison has actually become a hotbed of sorts into academic research on forgiveness.

The Badger Herald reported yesterday (â??UW apologizes for showing film with racial slurs,â? Oct. 15) that a black student objected to clips from â??Blazing Saddlesâ? shown at a recent â??training seminar.â?

It would probably help Anatole Beck get a street in Madison named for Karl Paul Link if he, Beck, had his own radio show.
The last successful drive to have a street renamed for someone in Madison came more than 20 years ago, and it was fueled by a popular morning radio host.

Author: Sarinna Areethamsirikul is a PhD candidate in Development Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States.

The Milwaukee region is home to a concentration of water companies. They include nine different facilities for five of the world’s 11 largest water companies.

But it’s equally clear that those companies lack the collaborative research capacities to act as a global player, at least at this stage. Rather, they operate mostly in isolation, without any tradition of working with the local universities – a serious shortcoming, when one considers the contributions that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made to biotech development and the role that Silicon Valley universities played in advancing computer science.

Milwaukee, by contrast, has failed to generate a meaningful number of patents for water innovations, although the big companies boast their own labs. The Great Lakes WATER Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee focuses on ecology, not water-treatment technologies.

George W. Bush rode to the White House pledging high standards for all students. Heâ??ll leave Washington with the nationâ??s public education system focused on teaching basic skills to disadvantaged student populations, with the United States lagging in international comparisons of educational attainment, and with his signature education law plagued by so many problems and mired in so much controversy that it has put at serious risk two decades of work to improve public schooling by making educators accountable for their studentsâ?? success.

Douglas N. Harris is a professor of education policy studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Margaret Trost was on her second visit to Haiti when the relationship between public policies and personal catastrophes became crystal clear to her.

Trost, 45, earned her master’s in journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked in production at WHA-TV. She first went to Haiti in early 2000 to try to find some meaning in her life after the sudden death of her husband from an asthma attack at their Cottage Grove home in September 1997.

While there, she discovered an opportunity to help a priest in Port-au-Prince start a lunch program for the very hungry children who inhabit this poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. A few months later, she was back trying to learn more.

Feature on Nina Camic, law professor at the University of Wisconsin.