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Category: UW-Madison Related

What you need to know about Microsoft’s big investment in Wisconsin data centers and workers.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The slate of new initiatives to help them get there includes: Partnering with the University of Wisconsin’s Connected Systems Institute and Gateway Technical College to establish an an AI Co-Innovation Lab, an immersive training program for companies learning to operate in an AI environment. Microsoft has two other labs, both on the West Coast.

Will pro-Palestinian protests lead to lasting change?

USA Today

In fact, there’s a famous case, University of Wisconsin, when they were protesting against Dow Chemical, which was recruiting on campus, and they manufactured napalm, which was a chemical weapon used in Vietnam, which killed a lot of civilians and there was basically a police riot.

Will pro-Palestinian protests lead to lasting change?

USA Today

In fact, there’s a famous case, University of Wisconsin, when they were protesting against Dow Chemical, which was recruiting on campus, and they manufactured napalm, which was a chemical weapon used in Vietnam, which killed a lot of civilians and there was basically a police riot.

Hawaii may soon have America’s first official state gesture

The Economist

And for well over a decade Jo Handelsman, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been championing a state microbe. Among other things, Lactococcus lactis is used to make cheese, a big local industry. Professor Handelsman said the idea to make it a state symbol started off as a joke in a meeting of the bacteriology department.

Colleagues were considering how to educate people about the benefits of microbes, but then they decided “that’s actually a great idea”. The first attempt to pass it, in 2009, failed, but it’s back on the agenda.

Democrats target Republicans on budget committee, aim for control of Legislature

Wisconsin Examiner

Wikler said the campaign is to “hold Republican politicians to account for refusing to do what most Wisconsinites want on critical issues like hospital closures, the closures of University of Wisconsin campuses and funding from settlements about opioid addiction. Critical issues where most Wisconsinites want the same thing but these Republican politicians are playing political games that affect people’s lives.”

Tackling racial justice with the voice of experience

The Hill

This epiphany drove her (Patrice Willoughby) to law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she began to understand generational wealth, the racial wealth gap, how school districts are funded through property taxes and how that plays out in the education of young people.

Out and About

POLITICO

The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with the UW’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, hosted the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics at the National Press Club, with the support of Don Graham and WaPo. This year’s award was presented to a team of NBC reporters who showed how authorities in Hinds County, Mississippi, were unceremoniously burying the bodies of missing people without notifying the loved ones still searching for them.

Wisconsin has a new Alice but she didn’t grow up on a farm

Wisconsin State Journal

A UW-Madison senior has been selected as the next Alice in Dairlyland but the Oconomowoc woman did not grow up on a dairy farm.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has selected Halei Heinzel as Wisconsin’s 77th Alice, a year-long paid communications position that will send Heinzel around Wisconsin promoting the state’s agricultural industry.

UW-Madison releases report into former UWPD chief

Spectrum News

The former chief of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department (UWPD), Kristen Roman, resigned on Feb. 11, 2024. The University of Wisconsin-Madison said Thursday that after a review, Roman “substantiated multiple violations of university employment policies and work rules.”

Biden’s 2024 Election Campaign Threatened by Israel-Hamas War, Student Protests

Wall Street Journal

Richard Thau, who conducts focus groups with swing voters, said his recent work finds that many young voters support the goals of the protests but are only lightly committed to the cause. “Support was a mile wide and maybe three inches deep,’’ said Thau, who conducted two focus groups this week with independent voters from across the University of Wisconsin system, all of whom were too young to vote in 2020. “It became clear that these students had empathy for what the people in Gaza are experiencing, but most would not go the extra mile to relieve the suffering of the Palestinians.’’

‘To remember them is to love them’: Milwaukee vigil held for Indigenous people lost to opioid epidemic

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“My son is represented up there,” Denning said of his prayer tie on the teepee without a cover, adding that the incomplete teepee represents how it feels when we lose someone.

His son, Sawyer, was a bright, young man who did well as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Denning said Sawyer was a good student throughout high school and hadn’t been exposed to drugs. But, at college, someone gave him an anti-anxiety drug to help step up his studying. Sawyer would then drink alcohol to help himself level out, so he could sleep after long study sessions fueled by the drug. He started to crash and struggled with addiction.

Who is Peter Barca? What to know about Democratic candidate challenging Bryan Steil.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

According to his legislative bio, Barca got his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received a master’s in public administration and educational administration from UW-Madison. He also attended graduate school at Harvard University.

According to a UW-Madison alumni profile, Barca was a “self-proclaimed math geek.”

Cudahy names three finalists for superintendent position

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Olson is pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a bachelor’s degree in special education from the same university. She also earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

‘Top Chef: Wisconsin’ Episode 5 recap: It’s a supper club showdown at Madison’s Harvey House

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Kish explained that the Quickfire Challenge would be centered around another Madison culinary icon: chef Carson Gulley, who was the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s residence hall chef from the 1920s through the 1950s. From 1953 to 1962, he and his wife hosted a weekly cooking show on WMTV — the first-ever African American couple to host a cooking show.

Who was Carson Gulley, the Madison chef who inspired a ‘Top Chef’ challenge?

Wisconsin State Journal

Gulley was the head chef for UW-Madison for 27 years. Gulley was viewed by many as Madison’s first celebrity chef and had a cooking show, radio show and culinary business. Despite his success, Gulley faced significant racial discrimination in Madison, especially when it came to housing, according to Wisconsin State Journal archives.

1970s, higher ed, lessons, economics, America, nationalism

Inside Higher Ed

The shrapnel-packed bomb that destroyed an East Village townhouse in 1970, leaving three dead; the researcher killed in the bombing of the University of Wisconsin’s Math Research Center; the botched robbery of a Brink’s armored truck that left two police officers and a Brink’s guard dead—as well as the police shootouts that killed Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Bobby Hutton, and other Black Panthers—these are the memories that I conjure up whenever I hear Archie and Edith Bunker sing “Those Were the Days, the theme song from “All in the Family.” Not phrases like “the way Glenn Miller played” or “fifty dollars paid the rent/freaks were in the circus tent.”

“The Collected Poems of Delmore Schwartz,” Reviewed

The New Yorker

Living in shabby apartments with his younger brother and his perpetually unhappy mother, the preteen Schwartz turned to literature as an escape. He borrowed armfuls of books from the public library: O. Henry, Sinclair Lewis, Alexandre Dumas. A three-dollar copy of Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” sparked an interest in poetry, but he didn’t become serious about the craft until college. (Schwartz started at the University of Wisconsin but, lacking sufficient funds for out-of-state tuition, transferred to New York University, where he earned a degree in philosophy.)

WHAD-FM 90.7 will switch to classical music as part of Wisconsin Public Radio reshuffle

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“We have heard from Milwaukee listeners for years that they want us to bring classical music radio back to the city and this will do just that,” Marta Bechtol, executive director of the Educational Communications Board, said in a statement from WPR. The board operates WPR and PBS Wisconsin in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Compensation for Wisconsin teachers dropped 19% since 2010, report finds

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

New programs are working to fill the gaps. A new University of Wisconsin-Madison Special Education Teacher Residency Program covers the cost of an in-state resident’s master’s degree in special education and provides a stipend for students who agree to work at Milwaukee Public Schools. And the new Wisconsin Special Educators Induction Program provides coaching and training for new special education teachers.

Ahead of UW-Madison talk, Ezra Klein says we’re in dangerous phase of polarization

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist, podcast host, and bestselling author of “Why We’re Polarized”, will be in Wisconsin later this month for a presentation on why American politics is so polarized and what it has done to electoral institutions, policymaking, and the media. Before his stint at the Times, he was the founder, editor-in-chief, and then editor-at-large of Vox, the explanatory news platform, which has won many awards and now reaches more than 50 million people each month.

Fact-check: Claim that eclipse-watchers in Madison were protesting Biden is Pants on Fire

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Brandon Maly, chair of the Republican Party of Dane County, posted a photo on X of a large crowd of people gathered on UW-Madison’s Library Mall. Those people were “out in full force at UW Madison today protesting Biden,” he claimed.

Multiple news reports confirm that the people were in fact there to watch the eclipse.

Replay: 2024 solar eclipse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, highlights from historic celestial event

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ken Knobel of San Francisco traveled to Wisconsin to visit his son at UW-Madison over the weekend and decided to watch the eclipse from Milwaukee because of the clear skies.

“I think the most exciting part of it is that it’s, for some people, once in a lifetime,” said Knobel, who said it’s the first eclipse he’s ever watched.

UW grad’s documentary finds hope in Cambodian immigrant’s story

The Capital Times

Solomon was working in video production for StoryBridge after graduating from UW-Madison when he happened to mention to one of the other tenants in the building that he was traveling to Thailand. The neighbor suggested he stop over in Cambodia to see the school projects that Garms and Ou were working on through their organization, the Cambodian School Project.

Evan Stark

The Guardian

After graduating from Brandeis in 1963, he pursued his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, but his graduate fellowship was withdrawn in 1967, in retaliation for his role as a leader of protests against the war in Vietnam.

State Bar of Wisconsin agrees to change diversity definition in lawsuit settlement

The Associated Press

On its website, the bar association says the program is for University of Wisconsin and Marquette University law school students “with backgrounds that have been historically excluded from the legal field.” But the lawsuit alleged that is a new focus and that the program has historically been touted as a way to increase racial diversity among attorneys at law firms, private companies and in government.

Trump attacks immigration in return to Wisconsin

Wisconsin Public Radio

Samantha Crowley, a medical student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said during the Biden campaign’s press conference that a national abortion ban would “take away the reproductive freedoms” of over 1 million Wisconsin women. She said Trump’s largely taken credit for the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision getting overturned.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson wins reelection in landslide victory

Wisconsin Public Radio

Johnson grew up in the city’s troubled 53206 zip code and attended Milwaukee Public Schools. He was one of 10 siblings — his father worked as a janitor for the Milwaukee Public School District and his mother as a certified nursing assistant. After attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he returned to his hometown to work for the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board, now Employ Milwaukee.