Category: Opinion

At least state Rep. Steve Nass can shoot straight.
The Ozaukee County Board just shot itself in the foot. And now it’s encouraging every other Wisconsin county to do the same.

Ozaukee County supervisors voted 18-11 last week to cut $8,427 out of its budget for university services.

Op-ed column by UW-Madison sociology professor Joe Elder notes that it took half a century to achieve the fragile peace between Israel and Lebanon that preceded the recent outburst of extraordinary violence and asks: Is the U.S. really insisting on another half-century of tragedy before calling for a ceasefire?

Chancellor’s speedy recovery

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley was spotted in a coffee shop without crutches or a cane the day after his knee surgery last week, joking that his goal had been to best the knee recovery record of athletic director Barry Alvarez.

Asked about his surgery, Wiley admits the two can’t fairly be compared. His was outpatient via orthoscope for a torn meniscus, not the knee replacement Alvarez necessitated in 1999. But he says Alvarez’s high-profile recovery spurred him on.

“When people told me it would take weeks to recover, I joked that Barry was walking almost immediately, and I intended to do the same. As it happened, my ‘prediction’ was true, but I doubt I have ever beaten any of his injury/recovery records!”

The best news is that Wiley says his knee “is now much better than it has felt in months.”

Consider Downtown Madison. Within blocks of one another are the city police department, the county sheriff’s office, the Capitol police and UW-Madison police. There’s a Secret Service office, U.S. marshals, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and, over on the West Side, the FBI. In addition, Madison’s many surrounding towns and suburbs have forces of their own.

If you drive down the Beltline, you never know which police agency might pull you over.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants to send the rowdiness of Madison’s Halloween celebration to the graveyard.
To inhibit rioting, reveling and other incendiary forms of drunkenness this October, the mayor will gate and charge a $5 entry fee to State Street.

Opponents of the plan say that charging and restricting entry to public property challenges the right to assembly. They also claimed it prices individuals out of the celebration.

Columnist Steve Chapman says that even at private colleges, alumni, donors and other interested parties are inclined to question the value of academic freedom when it leads to lunacy.

The tension erupted into open hostilities recently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which discovered that one of its instructors has an unorthodox view of recent history. Kevin Barrett, who teaches a course on Islam, thinks the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were “an inside job” masterminded by the Bush administration to justify U.S. aggression in the Middle East.

I’d like to think that we have survived an endless stream of theories in the classroom – from President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowing Pearl Harbor to be attacked (Ã?¡ la 9-11) to the fact-light, race and ethnicity lectures that do little to offset bias and segregation nationwide as vocalized recently by President Bush at the NAACP convention.

What seems to be of greater concern is the accepted practice of talking about issues as if there are only two sides: One is right and the other is selling a pack of lies.

Fortunately for Kevin Barrett, UW-Madison apparently discovered that he is a fair teacher and does not indoctrinate his students. But, unfortunately, the administration’s response since then has been remarkably tone deaf.

If the university does not reverse course – which it can, easily – the present melee will continue to escalate and, even worse, occur again.

We sincerely hope this is the last editorial we have to do on UW lecturer Kevin Barrett, his beliefs on the incidents of September 11th and his qualifications to teach at the University of Wisconsin. This should be a done deal already.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz must have had a late night visit from the ghost of Halloween past.
How else to explain his sudden about face?

For the last few years, he’s been Mayor Ebenezer Scrooge, shouting “Bah, humbug!” to Halloween and warning visitors to stay away – far, far away – from State Street.

KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired.

As a member of the UW Board of Regents, I have received e-mails and phone messages protesting the university’s decision to allow lecturer Kevin Barrett to teach a course on Islam culture and religion, given his views on the Sept. 11 tragedy.

UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley has done a thoughtful job of hinting he might not want his job for life and might even retire in the near future.

…we’ve had far too many examples of government cover-ups and outright fabrications to dismiss out of hand as loony anyone who raises questions about the “official” version of events.

And where better to have a free and open discussion of controversial ideas than on a college campus?

Apparently, the biggest mistake made by Kevin Barrett, a part-time instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was appearing on a right-wing radio talk show in Milwaukee.

I admit I have more than a little sympathy for the folks living in the UW-Arboretum area who don’t want to see a developer “improve” three lots at Arboretum Lane and Arboretum Drive.

The latest in the academic follies comes from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where the administration has cleared the way for an instructor to teach his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were plotted by the US government to create an excuse for war.

By now, most everyone has heard about the recent academic freedom conflict at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

It is a new day, indeed, on campus. I look forward to the UW biology department hiring scholars who support the scientific claims of the intelligent design movement and former Harvard President Larry Summers’ views (more accurately, suggestions) regarding the innate differences in mathematical ability between men and women.

I anticipate the fireworks when the Medical School adds a professor with substantial experience in turning gays and lesbians into heterosexuals. The sifting and winnowing should be hot and heavy. Quaere verum, baby (“Seek the truth,” for those millions of us not as smart as professor Barrett – I looked it up).

The University of Wisconsin will allow part-time lecturer Kevin Barrett to teach a fall class on Islam, including his theory that the U.S. government planned the 9/11 terror attacks to launch a war on Muslim nations.

Author: Tamir Moustafa, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is a visiting fellow in the law and public affairs program at Princeton University.

Academic freedom, free speech and ââ?¬Å?sifting and winnowingââ?¬Â are sacred principles at the University of Wisconsin System.

For as long as anyone can remember, candidates for public office have circulated their nominating petitions on the Memorial Union Terrace.

Packed with Wisconsinites, most of them in a mellow mood, the terrace is an ideal spot for would-be contenders to gather the signatures they need to earn a place on local and statewide ballots.

Canon advises congress

On very short notice last week, UW-Madison poly sci prof David Canon found himself in Washington, testifying in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, urging senators to renew and strengthen the Voting Rights Act — the four-decades-old law that ended poll taxes and literacy tests that had disenfranchised voters, particularly African Americans.

The hazards of books

University Communications’ Susannah Jacobson fulfilled a life-long goal by competing on “Jeopardy!” (It airs at 4:30 today on Ch. 15.) She was worried because “with only a few weeks between the call and the taping, I crammed over my lunch hour using a book of lists made for game show prepping. A few days before the show I realized that the book was full of glaring errors.”

However, her final showing was more-than-credible, she reveals.

Look, I don’t denigrate the danger posed by clowns. I lived in Madison in 1970, when four inept young men tried to blow up the ammunition plant near Baraboo by flying over in a single-engine airplane and dropping a Molotov cocktail onto the snow- covered roof of one of the buildings.

A few months later, these same guys managed to blow up Sterling Hall on the UW- Madison campus, killing one researcher and destroying the work of dozens. I don’t think we should wait until clowns manage to get lucky and kill people before we stop them.

Ever been haunted by a ghost on campus? John Allen, associate editor of On Wisconsin, is collecting campus ghost tales.”I’ve gotten about 50 stories so far,” says Allen, perusing his e-mail. “Ghost stories are a favorite urban legend. I’m hoping to get a list of what is out there.”

The UW Board of Regents calls student fees “stealth tuition.”
A student government committee at UW-Madison uses the slang “seg fees.”

But ask average UW students for their own definition of segregated fees and they will invariably tilt their heads and effuse a blank shrug.

I turn 64 just six days after Paul McCartney. So I’ve been pondering the lyrics of his famous song with more than passing interest and marveling at where the time has gone.
Coincidentally, I completed a 42-year journey a few days ago while christening my new racing bike.

Opinion column mentions a sister city program originated in the 1950s from Ed Zawacki, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.

When I graduated from high school, the official choreography of the event required everyone in my class to line up in height-order lines by gender. After that the two lines were placed side by side, so that we would process in and out of commencement next to a person of the opposite gender who was the exact same rank, height-wise, as we were.

With the release of a University of Wisconsin-Madison appeals panel report that damns the university administration’s treatment of Paul Barrows, the UW Board of Regents and administrators are now honor bound to reassess the status of the former vice chancellor for student affairs.

Bill Cronon and Northland College are a natural fit. I saw the bond instantly a year ago this month when our Wisconsin Idea Seminar bus from Madison pulled into Northland’s campus in Ashland for a dinner visit with faculty and students.

Cronon, the UW-Madison’s pre-eminent environmental historian who was our seminar’s guest lecturer for the week, launched immediately into an enthusiastic description of the college’s “green dorm,” the McLean Environmental Living & Learning Center, powered by a wind turbine and photovoltaic panels.

….it’s most appropriate that Northland will honor Cronon’s considerable achievements by awarding him a doctorate in humane letters at the college’s commencement on May 27.

After listening to the representatives of big business at a forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently, you might be led to believe that the UW System should exist for the benefit of corporations alone.