You’re one of the smartest people in the country. You’ve had success throughout your career, academically and professionally. You serve on several boards of international businesses and joined public policy debates. You’ve answered questions on national issues posed by conservative and liberal talk show and podcast hosts.
But you might write the following note turning down a suggestion that you apply to be the next president of the Universities of Wisconsin.
UW-Madison political professor Howard Schweber joins For the Record to analyze voting patterns in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin has added a definition of antisemitism to state law, joining dozens of other states but drawing sharp criticism from opponents who say it will police free speech rights, specifically on college campuses.
Gov. Tony Evers on March 27 signed Assembly Bill 446, now 2025 Act 143, codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition and examples for antisemitism to help determine discriminatory intent.
Republican lawmakers are threatening to remove members of the UW Board of Regents after the Board asserted its own authority to fire the Universities of Wisconsin president.
The Regents unanimously voted without discussion Tuesday to fire President Jay Rothman, who has led the about 165,000-student and 13-university system since 2022.
Governor Tony Evers signed a bill Wednesday that gave the University of Wisconsin athletic department financial cushion in the form of tax dollars to service debt, and codified the university’s rules surrounding name, image, and likeness payments to athletes into law.
As Wisconsin farmers prepare for the 2026 growing season, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension is launching another year of Badger Crop Connect webinars, a twice-monthly series providing timely, data-driven insights for the state’s corn, soybean, small grain, and forage farmers and industries.
The leading candidate in Wisconsin’s race for governor is unhappy with a new law that defines antisemitism and looks to fight it at the University of Wisconsin.
State Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, who is leading the Democratic race for governor, and who calls herself a Democratic Socialist, took to social media recently to criticize a new law that Gov. Tony Evers signed.
“I am disappointed that Gov. Evers has signed into law a controversial definition of antisemitism that will compromise free speech across the state and academic freedom at our universities,” Hong wrote.
Two appeals court judges are making their pitches to voters as the April 7 election approaches.
Although technically a nonpartisan race, Judge Chris Taylor is backed by liberals, while Judge Maria Lazar is supported by conservatives. If Lazar wins, liberals will maintain their 4-3 majority. Conversely, if Taylor wins, liberals will expand their majority to 5-2.
To break down the stakes of this election, For the Record sat down with UW-Madison Professor Michael Wagner.
If Wisconsin adopts a specific definition of antisemitism — as proposed in a bill recently passed by the state Legislature — the change could collide with First Amendment rights, said Howard Schweber, who studies free speech and constitutional law.
The definition wouldn’t necessarily violate the First Amendment, he said. But issues could “easily arise” if the definition is put to use, said Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an affiliate faculty member in the Law School.
UW-Madison on Wednesday swiftly denounced the university student government after it approved a measure demanding the school divest from companies linked to Israel, calling the demands “flawed, unrelated and illegal.”
The Associated Students of Madison passed the bill at a special meeting Wednesday evening after hearing from nearly 40 students who spoke both in favor and against the legislation. The meeting followed several hours of debate at a forum earlier Wednesday.
“There is no prize for second place,” said Greg Keenan of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. “It is critical that the U.S. win the race for quantum technologies. Fortunately for us, UW-Madison is home to some of the world’s most significant breakthroughs in quantum science.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison students, alumni and professors who came to Washington to lobby for more research funding got schooled on just how important that funding is.
University researchers explained how federally funded work in quantum physics and mechanics led to the invention of GPS, lasers and MRI technology.
“With divided government and uncertain election results on the horizon, I think both parties have an interest in doing maybe something they think is right, rather than something that will advantage their party, because it’s not clear that they will have the ability to lock in those advantages,” says Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Taxpayers in Wisconsin could soon be putting more money towards UW-Madison.
A bill would make taxpayers pay for UW Athletic facilities freeing up money for NIL deals for student-athletes.
Gov. Tony Evers will decide if the NIL bill becomes a law or not and he stated that he supports the goal of this bill.
Wisconsin residents spoke out on how they felt about the bill.
“I think our taxes should be going to other things, especially since they’re so high.” said resident Sufiyah Siddique.
In a rare moment of drama in the Senate Tuesday, a bill that would give the UW-Madison athletics department millions to pay down debt and free up other money for revenue-sharing with players passed by a single vote that changed just as the legislation appeared doomed.
The Wisconsin Badgers are one step closer to receiving taxpayer support as they adapt to the changing college sports landscape.
With a one-vote margin, the state Senate on March 17 approved a bill to provide taxpayer funding for athletic facility debt service and formalize rules around name, image and likeness. Eleven Republicans and six Democrats voted in favor of the bill, while seven Republicans and nine Democrats voted against it.
Aaron Greer, an independent filmmaker and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has championed film incentives for years, said without an incentive projects would often look elsewhere.
“There’s an old saying in Hollywood, it takes ten years to become an overnight success. There’s a way it feels like that with this,” Greer said.
Following the sports and money theme, the Senate will also consider a bill that would give more than $14 million to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for athletic facility costs in order to offset the money the school pays student athletes in NIL deals.
Conservative-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar discussed judicial impartiality, gerrymandering and the importance of freedom of speech for University of Wisconsin-Madison students in an interview with The Daily Cardinal Friday.
Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh remains optimistic about the outlook of proposed legislation that would provide taxpayer support for athletic facility debt service and codify rules around name, image and likeness.
“I think there’s a tremendous amount of receptivity to the bill and what’s in the bill,” McIntosh said.
John Gross, a clinical associate professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Briggs is charged because of a newer law in Wisconsin that bans making or having virtual child sexual abuse materials. The statute passed in 2024.
“We’ve added a statute like this to make sure that the law actually captures not just images that were made of actual children, but also images of children that were generated by artificial intelligence,” Gross said.
Derek Clinger, a senior attorney with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s State Democracy Research Initiative, told WPR the federal government’s use of the Civil Rights Act is an interesting approach.
“You’ve got this tricky interpretive question about whether or not this law written in 1960 was meant to apply to the concept of a statewide voter registration list, which did not exist for another four decades,” Clinger said.
The pledge “may sound good as rhetoric, but by law could not be put into practice,” said UW business professor emeritus Rodney Stevenson, founder of the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute.
“That’s a terrible idea,” said University of Wisconsin professor of public affairs Manny Teodoro, who specializes in environmental policy and utility management.
In response to questions from the State Journal, DOA spokesperson Tatyana Warrick wrote in an email that the RFP “was posted in error.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the request was simply posted prematurely or the state has reconsidered the idea. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers’ administration did not respond to requests for comment from the State Journal.
Trump cannot simply mandate that the federal government take over election administration in a state or local jurisdiction, says Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
To do so would require federal legislation, which Clinger says seems unlikely.
Some Senate Republicans are withholding their votes because they believe the Save America Act “provides too much federal control” over elections, Clinger says. Actually “taking over” administration would be a further step with even less support, he adds.
“American elections have pretty much always been run by the states, with just a few key exceptions where Congress has passed laws impacting that,” says Clinger.
Wisconsin lawmakers moved closer to providing millions in taxpayer funding to help the University of Wisconsin-Madison athletics department compete in the evolving landscape of college sports name, image and likeness programs.
The Joint Finance Committee approved Bill 1034 on Wednesday afternoon in an 8-5 bipartisan vote, advancing legislation that would allocate $14.6 million to UW athletics. The bill could reach the Senate floor as soon as next week.
When Evers called Republican lawmakers in the past for special sessions, they often gavel in and out within seconds to avoid taking action. But University of Wisconsin-Madison political science Professor Barry Burden said this special session might have potential among Republicans.
The amendment is more of an “idea of wanting to end partisan gerrymandering,” not necessarily about the process, Burden said, adding that the amendment has to move through the legislature, campaigning and voter ballots before it could be approved.
“It’s a long, complicated set of steps. But I think for the moment, it’s still a live issue and has some potential,” Burden said.
A statue of Vel Phillips stands at the corner of Main and Carroll streets in Madison — the only statue of a Black woman on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Phillips, who became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s law school in 1951, built a career defined by historic firsts in Wisconsin politics and civil rights.
Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a bill through the Senate that would place policies in statute and provide funding to help the University of Wisconsin navigate changes in college sports allowing student athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL).
The Legislature’s budget committee voted Wednesday to give more than $14 million a year to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for athletic facilities costs as the sports powerhouse pays student athletes for “name, image, likeness” deals, known as NIL.
But the vote on the GOP-led Joint Finance Committee suggests the legislation will require Democratic votes to get over the finish line in the Senate.
Ron Kean, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s poultry specialist, told Wisconsin Public Radio that poultry producers are also growing frustrated by a lack of solutions in this new era of avian flu response.
“There’s going to have to be more work on vaccination, which is a big international political issue,” he said. “That I think is one of the big frustrations for the poultry industry.”
In December, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to bar hospitals from providing “sex-rejecting” services for youth under 18.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that children may experience “irreversible damage” when exposed to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical operations at a young age — for example, infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density and other irreversible physiological effects.
As a result, UW Health and Children’s Wisconsin halted what the health organization calls gender-affirming care in January. If hospitals didn’t abide by federal rules, they would lose funding for Medicare and Medicaid.
This year, Mount Mary University became the first college in Wisconsin to offer a reduced-credit bachelor’s degree.
The Universities of Wisconsin could soon follow.
Last week, the Board of Regents Education Committee unanimously approved revising a policy that would allow campuses to offer 90-credit degrees.
The approval on March 5 did not yet establish three-year degrees.
If state lawmakers don’t pass a college sports bill in the coming weeks, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s athletics department anticipates facing difficult financial decisions.
“Either we will need to reevaluate our expectations on the success of our sports, or we will need to reevaluate how they’re supported or how many of them exist,” Chris McIntosh, UW-Madison’s athletics director, said at a legislative hearing this month.
The law in question has been wrapped up in a yearslong debate over separation of powers that has made its way to justices in recent years, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. In many of those cases, the Supreme Court opinions have shown the justices interested in balanced branches of government.
“There seems to be an inclination to reinstate greater separation of powers between the branches and preserve the important roles of various actors, whether that’s the attorney general or the governor or the Legislature,” Godar said.
Wisconsin’s 13 public universities can now develop three-year bachelor’s degree programs — but it could be a while before any appear at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I know there are some other UW institutions that are exploring that as a possibility. We have not had discussions here at Madison about that,” Allison La Tarte, UW-Madison’s vice provost and chief data and analytics officer, said at a recent campus meeting.
In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t.
Wisconsin currently has 274 licensed hemp growers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last November, that number was 470.
The decline could be due to people waiting to see how the law plays out and if the loophole will close or not, said Shelby Ellison, an agricultural professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It might be clearer in another month how many people reapply for licenses through the USDA.
UW-Madison Data Science Institute associate professor Anna Haensch raised concerns with the potential electrical demands of data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was 14.6 gigawatts, and the Wisconsin Policy Forum expects it to increase about 17 gigawatts by 2030.
Additionally, Haensch emphasized the need to separate hyperscale data centers from the broader cultural narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
“Connecting data centers so explicitly to AI has made these projects almost untenable,” Haensch said, noting that AI is often framed in apocalyptic terms.
“The siting study includes looking at nuclear energy systems, anything from similar to today’s reactors that are operating to a variety of advanced reactor concepts, including microreactors and other smaller reactors, as well as fusion energy systems in the future,” said nuclear engineering professor and department Chair Paul Wilson.
Eighteen of the 700 companies on Forbes’ “Best Large Employers” 2026 ranking were headquartered in Wisconsin. Here are the businesses that made the list:
5. University of Wisconsin-Madison (rank No. 251; Madison)
“It’s going to hang in that $18 to $19 per hundredweight price for 2026. It doesn’t look like it’s going to rebound very strong this year,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Everybody has a different breakeven point; that’s not breakeven for a lot of dairy producers. It’s going to be a tough year.”
Kelly Sheffield has a simple philosophy written on the walls of the Wisconsin volleyball locker room: When you’re at Wisconsin, championships are the expectation.
“We’re also trying to compete for championships. And we got that written downstairs in our locker room,” Sheffield said. “When you’re here at Wisconsin, that is the expectation, and that we’re all in it and it energizes all of us. We’re all in it together.”
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said this race is drawing less money and attention than recent cycles, in part because the ideological balance of the court is not at stake this time.
“It looks this year like at least some conservatives have kind of thrown in the towel and have said this is not a race that we’re likely to win. So they’re really putting their efforts into the fall election, especially in the governor’s race behind Tom Tiffany,” Burden said.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering came out on top, which apparently did not sit well with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Two UW-Madison economists dove into earnings data by program. Their recent report, “Degrees of Deception,” found their university came out on top for the most majors of any Wisconsin school. But this point of pride was obscured in the overall rankings because the university offers some lower salary-producing programs that MSOE doesn’t offer, such as music and social work.
The 2026 report is an update to the group’s more comprehensive 2021 assessment of climate change impacts on Wisconsin. Formed in 2007, the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts is a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The visit follows a partnership announcement between the Public Service Commission and UW’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics to study nuclear energy opportunities in the state.
Inside the University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor Tuesday morning, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers peered over the shoulders of student operator Nick Tierney, a senior majoring in nuclear engineering, to eye the array of instrumentation on the reactor control panel, then climbed the stairs to look down into the reactor’s cooling pool.
Name and likeness of college athletes
The bill, if signed into law, would formalize rules around name, image and likeness opportunities for college athletes in the state while providing taxpayer funding for athletic facility maintenance.
UW-Madison, the one power-conference athletic department in the University of Wisconsin System, would receive $14.6 million of taxpayer money annually for debt service for maintaining its athletic facilities. UW-Milwaukee would receive $200,000 for debt service and maintenance for the Klotsche Center, and UW-Green Bay would receive $200,000 for debt service for its athletic facilities.
“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.
“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”
Ignite Wisconsin’s grant of nearly $800K to the Wisconsin Fusion Energy Coalition will help push Wisconsin as a national hub for fusion energy.
Gov. Tony Evers, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), announced Thursday that the coalition, led by 5 Lakes Institute and UW-Madison’s fusion research work, will “accelerate startup formation, supply chain development, and community outreach in a sector projected to reach nearly $3 trillion by 2080.”
Taxpayers, the University of Wisconsin is desperate for your help. Athletic director Chris McIntosh made that perfectly clear last week while backing a bill that is making its way through the state Assembly.
How exactly will the $14.6 million McIntosh wants annually from the state — no, he needs from the state — be put to use as part of Assembly Bill 1034? Silly people of Wisconsin, that’s not for you to know.
State utility regulators and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are partnering to explore potential nuclear energy projects in Wisconsin.
UW-Madison and the Public Service Commission will conduct a siting study to evaluate the suitability of various sites and the impact of projects on local economies. The study will also look at different reactor technologies, including both traditional nuclear power, advanced small modular reactors and fusion energy.
Taxpayers, the University of Wisconsin is desperate for your help. Athletic director Chris McIntosh made that perfectly clear last week while backing a bill that is making its way through the state Assembly.
University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty are raising concerns over new workload requirements set to begin next fall that were passed as part of Wisconsin’s latest state budget negotiations.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department traditionally has been self-supporting financially, but that could change under a bill going through the state Assembly. Wisconsin would get $14.6 million annually from the state toward athletics facilities debt service under a measure that also would codify in state law name, image and likeness policies already in place at the school.
As the current legislative session wraps up, the odds that a UW-Madison program that recovers the remains of missing-in-action soldiers will secure state aid are shrinking.
In moves they described as efforts to make the state’s higher education system more meritocratic and safe for conservative students, Assembly Republicans voted Thursday to change eligibility for certain financial aid programs, and make it easier to sue universities for free speech violations.
UW-Madison is looking for an additional $14.6 million from taxpayers annually to maintain its athletics facilities.
But the state’s flagship public university also wants to ensure that name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts for the student athletes who train in them — and all other Badgers athletes — aren’t viewable by the public. Legislators on the Assembly Committee on State Affairs on Feb. 11 unanimously passed a bill which would exempt NIL contracts and revenue sharing for any UW campus from Wisconsin’s public records law.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved new policies that would cautiously ease access for political campaigning in residence halls in their February meeting by allowing greater door-to-door campaigning.
A new $5 million grant is set to bring more mental health professionals to Milwaukee Public Schools.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded MPS the four-year grant to help the district recruit and train school psychologists through partnerships with Alverno College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Republican lawmakers are advancing a bill to restore the ACT requirement as the “predominant” factor in admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
