BY RACHEL BUFF The following is reposted with permission from the atlasofadifficult blog. Rachel Buff is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She recently assumed editorship of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Here are the new policies that were adopted this month, or will be adopted next month by the Wisconsin…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Is disrupting a speaker worse than rape? According to the University of Wisconsin Board or Regents policy passed last week, it is. Only one of them gets mandatory penalties. If a student is accused of rape, and even convicted of sexual misconduct twice, there is no requirement for an automatic suspension,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH In yesterday’s Wisconsin State Journal, there is an article by Nico Savidge titled “Complaining of Bias on Campus, Republicans Push for ‘Intellectual Diversity’ at UW Schools.” Here are the opening paragraphs: “Conservative critics of higher education in Wisconsin have opened a new chapter of their longrunning complaints about institutions such as…
BY AARON BARLOW According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Republican state legislators in Wisconsin “are threatening to pull any hope of more state funding unless a new course at UW-Madison called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ is canceled.” This, from a movement that claims to want more freedom and less law. One legislator wants to go a step further, scouring “other…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent interview by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson in which Johnson declares, “we need destructive technology for our higher education system.” This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do with his “Trump University.” As I note in my new book, Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted…
BY KELLY HAND Kelly Wilz, author of the May–June Academe article “A Day in the Life of a Public University Professor in Wisconsin,” recently won the 2015–16 Teacher Excellence Award given by the student body of the University of Wisconsin-Marshfield/Wood County. Becoming an award-winning teacher is never easy, but as Wilz’s article demonstrates, it has…
As the faculties at one University of Wisconsin system campus after another vote “no confidence” in the leadership of system head Ray Cross and the Board of Regents, new evidence has emerged to demonstrate that, despite public claims by Cross that under his leadership “the substance of tenure was simply moved from statute to board…
Yesterday the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Ray Cross, president of the University of Wisconsin System, and in the system’s Board of Regents. The vote followed the board’s rejections of proposals made by faculty groups that would protect academic freedom in new system policies on tenure…
BY DAVE VANNESS Dear Colleagues, I am writing to you in my role as a fellow member of the UW-Madison faculty and not in my role as President of the local AAUP chapter. Our chapter is engaged in an ongoing, vigorous and respectful debate about the merits and risks of voting “No Confidence” in UW-System…
In ruling on a lawsuit brought by three labor unions, Dane County Circuit Judge William Foust has ruled that Wisconsin’s “right to work” statute is unconstitutional because it “amounts to an unconstitutional governmental taking of union funds without compensation since under the law unions must represent people who don’t pay dues” and “that presents an…