Category: Top Stories

As Republican Gov. Scott Walker prepares to campaign for president as the man who tamed Wisconsin’s unions, he’s taking on a new labor fight: weakening tenure protections for professors at public colleges and universities.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been making national headlines for years taking on public and private sector unions. Now, the possible GOP presidential candidate is going after another group — nearly 5,000 tenured faculty in the 26-campus University of Wisconsin system.

WASHINGTON — The American Association of University Professors voted Saturday to censure the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and three other institutions, while protesting planned changes — pushed by Republican lawmakers — to tenure and shared governance within the University of Wisconsin System. Members also discussed at their annual meeting here how the association might better respond to administrative moves to close troubled colleges in light of the shocking Sweet Briar College announcement earlier this year. They called that decision the first of many coming threats to similar institutions in financially and politically turbulent times.

The American Association of University Professors voted overwhelmingly at its annual conference here on Saturday to censure the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for withdrawing a tenured-faculty appointment from Steven G. Salaita over his Twitter posts harshly criticizing Israel.

Twenty-one scholarly groups led by the American Historical Association wrote on Thursday that they were “gravely concerned” about looming changes in tenure and shared governance in Wisconsin.

Four years after taking union rights away from teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker now wants to strip job protections for University of Wisconsin professors in a move he likens to the 2011 law that made him a national figure and set up his expected presidential run.

University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members upset about what they consider to be a coordinated political assault on the UW System spent nearly two hours in a packed lecture hall Tuesday afternoon, reiterating that tenure isn’t about a guaranteed job for life, but about protecting academic freedom.

The UW-Madison Faculty Senate was nearly unanimous Tuesday as it called on lawmakers to strike budget language that would decrease faculty influence and make it easier for tenured professors to be fired. But faculty members appeared to be of two minds on the tone they should take with a Board of Regents that many don’t trust to do what they believe is the right thing.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison asked state lawmakers on Tuesday to reconsider proposed changes to job protections for tenured faculty that have come under fire from professors and others who see it as putting academic freedom and their jobs at risk.

Like many university leaders, Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has had her ups and downs with the faculty. She butted heads with some professors in her support for a now-dead plan to make the university system into a more autonomous public authority, for example, but earned faculty praise when she defended professors against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s suggestion that faculty members might be shirking their teaching responsibilities.

The full University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted Friday to adopt a tenure policy to replace the one likely to be stricken from state statute, while rejecting one last opportunity to formally oppose planned Legislative changes to faculty terms of employment.

Mahesh Mahanthappa and Gray Jackson both grew up far away from Wisconsin but came here to pursue their passion for chemistry at UW-Madison, a national leader in the field.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously Friday to add faculty tenure protections to regents policy in anticipation of them being dropped from state law.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted on Friday to add faculty tenure protections to its policies, as Wisconsin lawmakers consider eliminating similar protections from state statutes.

The University of Wisconsin has weathered years of budget cuts, but many faculty members believe the elimination of tenure would be a tipping point. The elimination of tenure is being recommended in legislation adopted by the Joint Finance Committee. Quoted: Don Moynihan and Pamela Herd, both professors of public affairs.

The UW System Board of Regents centered Thursday meeting discussion around a recent update to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed state budget, which included a detailed description of a multiple-request motion passed during the May 29 Joint Finance Committee meeting.

Facing national attention and an onslaught of petitions and lobbying by University of Wisconsin professors, a Board of Regents committee on Thursday voted against formally opposing controversial changes to faculty tenure proposed by Republicans in the state Legislature, neglecting another motion asking lawmakers to strip the tenure changes from law.

A University of Wisconsin faculty member, who presented more than 2,500 petitions to the members of a UW Board of Regents committee Thursday asking them to restore protections to tenure imperiled in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, said he was shocked when the panel voted to recommend a policy that gives administrators greater leeway to dismiss tenured faculty.

With angry faculty members from several campuses looking on, a committee of University of Wisconsin System regents voted Thursday to go along with the intent of Republican legislative leaders in broadening the reasons in which tenured faculty can be dismissed.

A Republican plan backed by Gov. Scott Walker to remove tenure for University of Wisconsin professors from state law has emerged as the latest battleground for public employees in Wisconsin.

Are Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature on their way to doing serious harm to the respected University of Wisconsin system?

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is expected to finalize a policy on tenure for UW System faculty by the end of this week, after lawmakers proposed changes to the state’s tenure laws last Friday. Proponents say the changes would give university leaders better oversight of their employees, but the proposal has also made educators worried about the future of the state’s schools.

Faculty advocates are up in arms over proposed legislation in Wisconsin calling for a sweeping overhaul of the state’s public-university system. The measure, passed by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance as part of negotiations on the state budget, would greatly reduce faculty members’ say in the University of Wisconsin system’s affairs and scrap state laws providing them job protections such as tenure.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will discuss changes to the System’s tenure policies at its meeting Thursday, a main point of discussion at a faculty and staff meeting at UW-Green Bay Wednesday.

The “fearless sifting and winnowing” that is the core of the Wisconsin Idea would be squelched by the erosion of support for tenure in state law proposed by legislative Republicans, say leaders of a lobbying organization of UW-Madison faculty.

A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison professors is appealing to the UW Board of Regents to preserve tenure protections and standards of shared governance.