In July 1971, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon’s special representative, secretly traveled to Beijing. Kissinger’s voyage provided the basis for a dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China – two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years. A column by Jeremi Suri, UW-Madison history professor and author of a just-released book on Henry Kissinger.
President George W. Bush confronts a civil war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing abroad has plummeted, and domestic opposition to present policies is growing. America’s long-time adversary, Iran, similarly contends with a clash of generations at home, as well as a large cast of external challengers.
The time is ripe for the White House to pursue a “China opening” with Iran.
The problem is that people take things too literally.
Take Assembly Republicans, for example.
One of their bright lights must have seen the plaque at the front of Bascom Hall that quotes an 1894 Board of Regents statement: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found. “
Recently, the Wisconsin Population Health Institute issued its State Health Report Card, giving Wisconsin a B- for overall health and a D for health disparities. Didn’t a federal agency only a month ago say our health care system was No. 1 in the country in terms of its quality? How can we have the best health care but medium to poor health outcomes?
….How can Wisconsin raise our grades? We should continue to improve access to quality medical care, and we must increase our emphasis on the other determinants of health. Reducing smoking rates, controlling obesity and reducing substance abuse are among the most important overall strategies.
(David Kindig is an emeritus professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.)
MANY OF you probably already suspected that you lived in the greatest college sports town in the universe, or at least the Big Ten, and you didn’t need a national radio host to confirm it. But last week, one did.
I finally got a chance to listen to Scott Van Pelt’s recent ode to Madison on ESPN Radio, and it was an amazing thing to hear. Van Pelt sounded like a local tourism official who occasionally takes a second drink.
Brent Moss never saw Johnny Clay carry a football for the Park High School football team, either in person or on television.
Considering Clay turned 6 years old three days after Moss led the University of Wisconsin to the January 1994 Rose Bowl championship, itâ??s a safe bet Clay never Moss play either.
And, yet, there is such a bond behind these two local legends, a bond Moss would like to fortify, if possible.
Both Moss and Clay led Park to WIAA Division 1 state championships as juniors â?? Moss in 1988 and Clay in 2005. Both were born in January. Both were multiple first-team Associated Press All-State selections â?? Moss twice and Clay three times.
Quoted: UW law professor Alta Charo.
I’ve been reading with dismay about the state Legislature’s negotiations over the budget, particularly the appropriations for the University of Wisconsin, where I work.
The Assembly wants to reduce by $100 million the amount provided to the UW in the governor’s budget. This proposed reduction comes at a time when the university is already reeling from cuts it has suffered over the last two biennial budgets. I’m having a hard time understanding why the Assembly would want to do such a thing.
When Barry Alvarez began his first full year as University of Wisconsin athletic director in 2004, he and his staff penned a memorable document.
It was a mission statement outlining 12 priorities – from academic achievement and customer service to financial responsibility and commitment to diversity – that would serve as a guide to future decision-making.
We’ve all seen the bitingly clever bumper stickers that proclaim “My child and my money go to X University.” I’m a college professor, and when my students gripe about $50,000 annual costs and associated debt, I tell them they don’t want to know what I paid a quarter-century ago (60 times less in current dollars).
(Written for the Baltimore Sun; reprinted in 7/16 Capital Times)
I’ve been reading with dismay about the state Legislature’s negotiations over the budget, particularly the appropriations for the University of Wisconsin, where I work.
The Assembly wants to reduce by $100 million the amount provided to the UW in the governor’s budget. This proposed reduction comes at a time when the university is already reeling from cuts it has suffered over the last two biennial budgets. I’m having a hard time understanding why the Assembly would want to do such a thing.
Message to the Wisconsin Assembly: You’re not supposed to let the lunatics be in charge of the asylum.
The “lunatic” in this case is Rep. Frank Lasee, who, I confess, is one of my favorite lawmakers.
Santa Monica, Calif. – The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and the Public Patent Foundation have filed our formal comments with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office supporting its rejection of human embryonic stem cell patent claims asserted by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation because the claimed advances are obvious in the light of previous stem cell research.
This is why parents live frightened lives.
Police said Monday they found a body in a field near Oregon after a search by more than 100 police officers that began at 4:30 a.m. Monday. Authorities could not confirm the body was that of Kelly Nolan, the 22-year-old UW-Whitewater student who disappeared June 23 after spending an evening drinking with her friends in downtown Madison. But Madison Police Department spokesman Joel DeSpain acknowledged the massive search was undertaken in a hope of finding items connected with Nolan.
Congratulations to the State Journal for its informative, if belated, Sunday story on the decline of UW-Madison. As a professor emeritus of political science at Madison (1969-2001), I feel the situation is worse than described for these reasons:
For those of us who were fortunate enough to know her, to study and work with her, the late University of Wisconsin professor Elaine Marks was a never-ending source of insight and joy.
….Just why Elaine (1930-2001) still lingers can be found in a new book, a collection of a dozen essays written in tribute to Elaine and ably edited by her UW colleague Richard E. Goodkin and published by the UW Press.
….I suppose I feel sorry for the people whose paths never crossed Elaine’s, which is why I wish this volume would reach a more general public, particularly at a time when that public needs to know a lot more about the day-to-day life of university professors, intellectuals and the life of the mind.
Our economy has become increasingly knowledge-based. Employers in a wide range of industries need more highly skilled workers than they once did in order to remain competitive. Workers, likewise, need new skills and higher educational credentials in order to earn a decent wage.
At the core of the public spat between the Big Ten Network and the Comcast behemoth was a seemingly innocuous comment — “Indiana basketball fans don’t want to watch Iowa volleyball” — that prompted Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany to get defensive.
In picking a fight with Comcast, the largest cable provider in the country (24 milllion-plus subscribers as of December 2006), Delany may have violated the No. 1 Rule of Confrontation: Don’t pick a fight you can’t win.
We live in an age when almost nothing goes unnoticed in the world of sports, the irrelevant as much as the relevant.
If you want to see an unfiltered video of Lakers guard Kobe Bryant ripping his employers, unflattering footage of former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn at his sister’s wedding or highlights of an autistic high school basketball player wowing the world, you can find them with relative ease.
Jim Delany is a smart guy. He’s got a law degree and has spent nearly 30 years as a collegiate conference commissioner, the last 18 as the Big Ten’s head honcho. He has presided over a number of advancements in collegiate athletics over that time, from the addition of Penn State to the league in 1991, to the establishment of a conference hoops tournament and the advent of instant replay in football.
But even smart guys can lose their wits from time to time, especially when they get their dander up. Such was the case with Delany on Thursday, when he used a conference call with reporters regarding the fledgling Big Ten Network to take a giant cable outfit to task for perceived slights against the Big Ten.
When Tam Flarup becomes a hall of famer next month, she will do so with a sense of worthiness shared by her one-time roommate.
There was a time in the late 1970s when Flarup was the lone woman in the University of Wisconsin sports information office and Jan Helwig was only female on its athletic training staff. As such, they bunked together in hotels when traveling with the UW women’s basketball team.
Like many of you, I was inspired when, as a freshman, I first read the plaque placed on the UW-Madison’s Bascom Hall. The message, declared by the Board of Regents in 1894, is worth repeating:
“Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
Don’t look now but Wisconsin’s once beleaguered College Savings Program is suddenly a hot commodity.
The state’s “529” savings plans — EdVest and Tomorrow’s Scholar — now boast nearly 228,000 accounts. That’s up about 7 percent from a year ago and 45 percent over the past four years.
The growth is even more impressive when you consider the history of the Wisconsin 529 program, named after its section number in the IRS code that allows earnings to grow tax-free.
….This remains the great state University of Wisconsin, not some rinky-dink outfit on the Internet. We have standards and a great history. Are we willing to drop “the great state university” moniker and just call the UW “a university with state and corporate support”?
Maybe U.S. Bank could help with admissions. Those with their bank card oh, let’s not go there.
Entering into contracts that harm students but profit the university without transparency and open bidding is an outrage….
“I Got a Crush … on Obama,” the viral music video that exploded onto the Web last week with a risque beauty crooning her adoration for Sen. Barack Obama, has been watched by roughly 20 million people on YouTube, CNN, ABC, MSNBC and at its original home, barelypolitical.com.
The guy behind this phenomenon is Ben Relles, a 32-year-old New York advertising executive at Agency.com, who dreamed up the idea while walking home from work one day and co-wrote the song. What’s not as well known about Relles is that he was born in Madison and lived here for six years before moving to Philadelphia, then returned here for college, getting an undergraduate degree from UW-Madison in 1997.
If you’ve followed University of Wisconsin sports long enough to remember when Camp Randall Stadium had walk-up ticket booths, when Bucky Badger was the center court logo of choice and when six-figure coaching salaries were rare, then you have endured a lot of changes.
Author: Maureen Durkin is an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsinâ??s School of Medicine and Public Health.
Did Sen. Glenn Grothman really want the government checking bloodlines?
He’s proposed that those seeking a racial preference show that their ancestry’s at least 25% of the favored minority or that they show some knowledge of the culture they’re said to be diversifying a university with.
Does he mean this? The West Bend Republican wouldn’t say directly. But everything else he said suggests he’s really calling the race charlatans’ bluff: “If we don’t stop this thing, it’ll ruin America,” he says.
By PATTY LOEW: Last month when Jay Wilson left WKOW TV Channel 27 after 27 years (how appropriate), Wisconsin sports lost, not only one of its finest sportscasters, but also one of the nicest guys in the business.
In an industry that attracts big egos, I’ll remember Wilson as one of the most genuine and humblest TV personalities I’ve encountered. And witty? I always enjoyed his self-effacing banter and admired his ability to keep sports in perspective. But that’s not the only reason I’ll miss him.
Knowing Madison-raised actor Bradley Whitford of “West Wing” fame might read your script is darn good incentive to write a play. That’s what the Wisconsin Wrights New Play Development Project offered in a new endeavor between the UW-Madison Continuing Studies in Theatre, the University Theatre, and the Madison Repertory Theatre.
American Transmission Co.’s Mark Williamson announced last week that his power line firm rejects the notion that a new east-west transmission line could be built underground along the Beltline.
….Because the UW’s Arboretum stretches along the north side of the Beltline, the overhead route would have to run south of the highway. The amount of room there, especially since reconstruction of the frontage road, is minimal at best. Go look for yourself. It’s easy to see why Department of Transportation staff is deeply concerned….
Gary Kohlenberg has devised a financing structure and a branding concept that would help Gov. Jim Doyle as he tries to push guaranteed funding for students pursuing higher education through the Legislature.
Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant has been running into heavy resistance in the Legislature, mainly because its financing has been purposely left unclear.
Providing a package of loans and subsidies for every eighth-grader who signs a pledge to earn a B average and exhibit good behavior in high school makes a lot of sense in a state where only 25% of the population holds a baccalaureate, two points below the national average.
There is almost unanimity that education is the ticket to prosperity in an innovation economy.
If you’re lucky enough to live long enough, sometimes the world will come around to your way of thinking.
Professor Max Carbon retired from the UW-Madison nuclear engineering faculty 15 years ago and during both his working and retirement careers has been a rather lonely voice touting the virtues of nuclear power.
During this frantic admissions season, it is easy for our applicants to think that the most important moment in their college career is when they rip open the mail to find out where they got in and where they didn’t.
But we in higher education understand that the admissions process has less to do with rewarding each student’s past performance â?? although high performance is clearly essential â?? than it does with building a community of diverse learners who will thrive together and teach one another.
When it comes to creating the kinds of diversity we sorely need in this country, however, disturbing trends and setbacks are making it difficult for many public schools and universities to succeed. The reality is that as much as we may want to believe that racial prejudice is a relic of history, conscience and experience tell us better.
The oldest sport at the University of Wisconsin and its most dominant program have a couple of things in common.
They have the sweetest digs on campus. You probably couldn’t guess them without a hint. They don’t get a lot of love or attention from people like me.
A guy with a gun in his kilt is not the State Street poster child the Chamber of Commerce wants for Madison’s main street.
That said, Tuesday night’s shooting won’t stop me from going down to State Street tonight to catch dinner and CTM’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was in Madison over the weekend for the graduation of one of his nine children from a graduate program at the UW-Madison. And while he was here, he presided over a wedding ceremony as well.
Madison’s lakes are threatened. They are threatened right now. According to UW Madison lakes scientist Steve Carpenter the culprits are climate change, runoff pollution and invasive species. Sound familiar?
Simply three of the most talked about environmental influences of our times. And that’s why it is so important this Friday’s conference on the future of this regions lakes and watershed is focused on not just vision?necessary as it is?but also action. Immediate action.
We need both vision and action. We need a long term plan and sufficient resources to support it. We need organization and commitment. We need leadership. But we also need actions steps that can be taken citizens, elected officials and activists, researchers and scientists to reverse deterioration now and promote a cleaner future.
I knew better than to even try to dig up any dirt on LaMarr Billups. As Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said during a tribute to Billups at Friday night’s Spring into Jazz event presented by the Urban League of Greater Madison, Billups was involved in an enormous number of city and university projects and incredibly “he never made an enemy.”
I owe the high quality of my UW-Madison undergraduate degree to a long list of outstanding professors who not only taught facts but who sparked intellectual curiosity and academic growth in their students.
It’s a 15-foot by 15-foot cinder block cell, but it’s their cell and they’re sad to leave.
It’s a 15-foot by 15-foot cinder block cell, but it’s their cell and they’re sad to leave.
Max Thao and Ryan Cotant are the last UW-Madison freshmen to begin their college lives as residents of Room 809 in the West Tower of Ogg Hall.
Citizen involvement has been an underpinning of the two-year Future of Farming and Rural Life in Wisconsin Project. People from around the state had a hand in fashioning the list of recommendations released last week and featured on the front page of The Capital Times.
The recommendations — essentially action steps offered to policymakers, community leaders and interested citizens — will be discussed at the statewide Future of Farming and Rural Life conference May 14-15 at Monona Terrace. Information on registration is available on the project Web site. A report this summer will include the final recommendations.
This week Madison will have the opportunity to see living examples of the University of Wisconsin’s best tradition. In a gathering at the Memorial Union, we at the Wisconsin Alumni Association will be handing out the university’s Distinguished Alumni Awards.
But the awards aren’t the tradition I’m talking about — they’re just a bit of recognition, a highlight on UW-Madison’s true source of greatness. The university’s strength flows from its students, graduates, faculty, and staff. They’re the heart of the UW’s best tradition, which is encapsulated in the Wisconsin Idea, the principle that the university’s true purpose is to spread the influence of education and research to serve the entire state and indeed the world.
The Mifflin Street Block Party was a resounding success by nearly all accounts.
The University of Wisconsin is drawing the curtain on yet another eventful academic year. Faculty, students and staff have earned recognition for their work, and our sports teams collectively lead the nation.
The property-rights movement, said the speaker, “is not going away.” He added, “At some level I think they’re going to be successful.”
It was a notable statement, because the speaker, professor Harvey Jacobs of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is not a supporter.
Last Tuesday, students learned that football tickets for the 2007 season were sold out. Although not surprising in itself, as Camp Randall is routinely sold out, the real shock came to many students because they did not even know they were on sale.
Estimated at a cost of $1.3 million a year, a meager amount in comparison to the billions of dollars that make up the entirety of the budget, the addition of UW System domestic partner benefits to the Wisconsin biennial budget was unjustly denied last week by the Joint Finance Committee.
Scott Milfred is editorial page editor for the State Journal: smilfred@madison.com or 252-6110.
Instead of warning bar hoppers for the umpteenth time not to drink and drive, Michael Rothschild asked them what they wanted.
The UW-Madison emeritus business professor went to rural Wisconsin taverns six years ago to interview dozens of men ages 21 to 34 — the demographic most likely to drive drunk and crash.
Bartenders helped find and introduce Rothschild to what became focus groups of heavy drinkers prone to driving drunk.
“Just like Oscar Mayer might do if marketing a new luncheon meat, we asked: ‘What does the customer want?'”
President Bush has reiterated his oft-repeated assertion that we must support the troops. He must not be allowed to monopolize “patriotism,” “the flag,” and “the troops.” The rest of us can pay our respect to the idea of the nation, in our own mindful way, and as we see fit. On his own grounds, however, the president has a lot to answer for.
We can all probably agree that the NCAA is among the most hypocritical, overly regulated and insanely silly regulating bodies known to man.
For example, you could not give a UWM soccer player a ride were he or she trudging across Downer in a snowstorm or a hungry Wisconsin swimmer a couple of bucks for a sandwich.
In wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, parents worry about their children and whether UW-Madison would react appropriately if such a dangerous event were to occur here. The UW-Madison system recently started a review of the campusâ?? current security policies and instituted a plan to conduct future reviews to ensure that the campus has a safety plan should one of any number of different scenarios arise.
When I was a freshman, I wanted to live next to Lake Mendota. I knew the southeast dorms were not for this small-town boy. I felt lucky getting my first choice of Kronshage Hall, and when I moved in, my view of the lake from my room was one of the best in Madison. Even now, I still go out to Chamberlin and run along Lakeshore Path down to Picnic Point because it is one of the most serene runs in all of Madison.
That familiar yellow tag on our textbooks that reads â??usedâ? could mean catastrophe for all of us collegiate scholars because we may have unknowingly purchased an outdated chronicle of finite mathematics or an ancient account of what makes a good speech.
After a yearlong legal struggle, a federal court has ruled that the University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation is eligible to receive segregated fee funding. It seems that the final chapter of one of the yearâ??s most misunderstood stories has been written.
Demand for a business degree is booming worldwide.
In many respects, thatâ??s good news for me as the dean of the UW-Madison School of Business, but that same popularity also carries a downside.
I don’t even care if Joe Thomas is picked second by Detroit, fifth by Arizona or later this spring by the Milwaukee Bucks, who could use an athletic 6-foot-6 bruiser to give someone the business under the boards.
The only thing that seems important at the moment regarding the magnificent future of Joe Thomas – who one day just might be judged as the greatest professional player ever from the University of Wisconsin – is that Eric and Sally Thomas of Brookfield did some kind of job raising their son.
Type in “Virginia Tech” into the search engine at YouTube, and the top entries, surprisingly and poignantly, pre-date last week’s horrific campus shootings.
There’s an arena-shaking clip of the 2003 Hokies football team rushing onto the field to the tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” against the Miami Hurricanes. And there’s a cute little video prank where some students run through the streets with giant cardboard boxes over their bodies.
Both of these clips got to me in a way a lot of the network news coverage of the shooting and its aftermath didn’t.
You won’t go broke betting on the short-term thinking of teenagers.
Which is why the ad that landed in some UW-Madison students’ mailboxes right around the time of spring break is a work of marketing genius. It shows a young person wearing a T-shirt that reads:
“I went to Cancun on my Citi/AAdvantage Card, and I got 743 miles, a good start on my credit history and a bunch of memories.”
Is that great or what?
It is an American original, an act of grassroots democracy exported to the world.
Thirty-seven years ago, Earth Day launched a popular movement that changed our laws, culture and conventional wisdom, according to a column co-authored by Frances Westley, director of the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
