Category: UW Experts in the News

Quoted: UW-Madison public affairs and economics professor Menzie Chinn and UW-Madison economics professor Kim Ruhl.

Yoshiko Herrera, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on Russia and eastern Europe, and Jon Pevehouse, the chair of UW-Madison’s political science department, join Live at Four to explain what’s next following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Yoshiko Herrera agreed with Keane.

“Taking control of the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, is key to [Putin’s] plan,” said Herrera, an expert on U.S.-Russian relations. Given the opposition of the Ukrainian government and people, she said “the prospect of an insurgency or protracted struggle, unfortunately, seems likely.”

Quoted: Putin “has been preparing economically for sanctions for years,” Yoshiko Herrera, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in Russia and U.S.-Russia relations, told this column. Herrera cited Russia’s expansion of its reserves of foreign currency in recent times as one example

Referring to the invasion of Ukraine, Herrera added, “He is willing to pay an economic cost for this. Saying we are making it economically costly? That is not going to do it. He has already factored that in.”

Quoted: “This is a massive miscalculation,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Yoshiko Herrera, who is an expert on U.S-Russian relations. “This action yesterday was just another level of crazy. It’s a ruination of Russia for decades, so damaging for Ukraine and so costly all around.”

In Wisconsin, if someone is arrested for a crime and charges have been filed against them, they appear in front of a court commissioner for an initial appearance. At that hearing, the court commissioner considers the conditions, if any, that someone can be released while their criminal case is pending, said University of Wisconsin Law School professor Cecelia Klingele. Posting bail can be a condition of release. However, as the state’s bail laws currently exist, judges can impose “monetary conditions of release … only upon a finding that there is a reasonable basis to believe that the conditions are necessary to assure appearance in court.”

The report “is the equivalent of NOAA sending a red flag up” about accelerating the rise in sea levels, said University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientist Andrea Dutton, a specialist in sea level rise who wasn’t part of the federal report. The coastal flooding the U.S. is seeing now “will get taken to a whole new level in just a couple of decades.”

UW-Madison history professor David McDonald says several things led to this being the perfect time for Russia to stir the conflict that has simmered for decades.

It’s been more than a year since the Cap Times last sat down with our go-to pandemic explainer Malia Jones for her take on the ever-changing COVID situation. These days, Jones, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory, homeschools her kids by day (her solution for protecting her kids and their grandparents), works her day job on the swing shift, and somehow squeezes in time to run a pandemic information site called Dear Pandemic.

UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden told the Cap Times last fall that the term “forensic audit” had never been used in the election administration world until 2021 — when unfounded claims about widespread electoral fraud began circulating.