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Community Forum with Chancellor David Ward

published by dmahrens on January 25, 2012 - 11:39am

How can the university sustain excellence and austerity in an age of austerity?
Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012; 4 PM Memorial Union
Join Chancellor Ward and members of the UW Community to discuss this and related questions:
How can the university responsibly respond to the sharp reductions in state aid? What role should tuition play in the new financial structure? Employee compensation? How can long-standing educational models be reformed?

Joe Elder will moderate the discussion.
Refreshments Served!
Sponsored by Wisconsin University Union
and PROFS

The National Attack on Public Higher Education: Effective Strategies for Fighting Back.

published by dmahrens on September 28, 2011 - 11:20pm

Cary Nelson
Featured Speaker: Cary Nelson, President, American Association of University Professors. Prof. U. Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Panel: Sara Goldrick-Rab, Assoc. Prof. Educ. Policy
John Wiley, Former Chancellor, UW-Madison

Thursday, October 13, 4 PM
Memorial Union (TITU)

Sponsored by: Wisconsin University Union (WUU), PROFS Inc and AAUP

PDF Poster

Attached Files: 
nelson_poster.pdf
Nelson.png

Reviewing the bidding on the PA Proposal. And then what?

published by dmahrens on April 24, 2011 - 9:48pm

A few weeks ago, few would have expected that the bottom of the Public Authority proposal would collapse so rapidly, so unceremoniously.

The first sign of real stress were a chain of newspaper editorials from around the state criticizing the Governor’s “end-run” around the legislative process by including this monumental proposal in his budget. Newspapers ranging from Sparta News (on the left) to Beloit News (right) and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all basically repeated the same points. Only the Walker-boosting, Wisconsin State Journal continued to tout the wonderful “flexibilities” inherent in the Public Authority.

The proposal really started to sag at the UW’s budget hearing at the Joint Finance Committee. Senator Luther Olson indicated his displeasure and possible opposition to the budget proposal. He quickly followed his chiding of Martin and to a lesser degree, of Kevin Reilly with a press release stating his opposition to the proposal as a whole and that it was part of the budget.

Other legislators continued to fall off of the bandwagon. Senator Kapanke (La Crosse) knew which way the wind was blowing and denounced the PA. His newly announced opponent, JFC member, Rep. Shilling followed with a more vehement condemnation. Senator Darling (Shorewood), Co-chair of JFC was non-committal but also faces a recall and was unlikely to go out of her way to displease her constituents at the Milwaukee campus.

One could say that the exact time of death for the PA was when the (other) Co- Chair of Joint Finance Robin Vos, said on a Sunday morning news show that he thought the proposal would not be taken up by the committee. He reiterated that view later in the week but did a little bit of a back-track after that.

Others key legislators quickly followed with press releases such as that Friend of UW-Madison, Rep. Steve Nass and his committee Vice-Chair, Rep. Krueger. They all said essentially the same thing: the proposal is dead (or soon will be) and it’s time to start over with the System’s proposal or some other fix.

But here’s the interesting point: Governor Walker has not said ONE THING in defense of his plan. Think of his exertions on everything from collective bargaining to his appointment of the Marinette County Register of Deeds. On this Pretty Big issue, he has fallen silent. By his silence, he has sent a message that it’s OK, no hard feelings, legislators can tell their local campuses that they saved the day and preserved the UW System.

And that leaves Biddy Martin politically stranded with a proposal that has little viable political support (absent of her Badger Advocates lobbying team) on one end of State Street and diminishing support on the other.

Her options are not great:

  1. Take the WIP (Wisconsin Idea Partnership) and run! Martin is nothing if not sincere when she needs to be. Can she embrace Reilly & the Regents, say that they had the better idea and get some fraction of what she wanted to start with? (Of course, she will not get the right to run her own show but that wasn’t going to happen anyway, was it?)
  2. Beg for our “fair share” from the System. Under the Public Authority model, the Madison campus would get $30 million less than we would have if we had stayed as part of the System. The question is, if the PA deal does not go through will the System use the same method of allocating funds or will they put the Governor’s plan into place (wherein we pay $30 million for severance) and give the “loyal” campuses a few extra million? The System may want to punish Madison and have this penalty in store for us. Changing their mind will be a tough case for Martin to make.
  3. Get some control of the run-away train. Martin & Walker have (to continue the metaphor) set the train in motion but now they have largely lost control. Will a special legislative committee be formed? That would be highly unusual. Will it go to Rep. Nass’s committee? He’d love to have it because it would give him and his aide an opportunity to kick the campus around for weeks, if not months. Will it be rolled over to a Legislative Council Committee after the session is over in March, 2012? That might put something on the agenda in the next session but their work usually ends in a dead-lock. Whichever process unfolds, it is likely that many legislators, who are not Friends of UW-Madison, will have a major role in the development of the new proposal.
  4. Drop it. Don’t go for the half measure, the lipstick on the pig, the embrace of the Regents, etc. Just admit that it didn’t work out this time but there is another day and contrary to the earlier predictions of catastrophe as a result of the budget cuts, we’ll somehow make do. Not very dramatic but is a relatively simple course to take.
  5. Get fired. At the April 20th meeting of the Madison Rotary Club, Martin said, “I’m willing to lose my job over this.” That may come to pass.

What about the rest of us? Unlike the Martin/Walker proposal for a public authority that was negotiated in secret and then run through the JFC without a single hearing on the proposal, these other legislative processes are more transparent, fluid and thus, subject to the influence of faculty and staff. This influence can be realized if we collectively decide to act and not merely limit ourselves to criticism after-the-fact. Some of the mechanisms for action are in place and may with real limitations be effective. Others may need to be created or enhanced. Wisconsin University Union, PROFS, TAA, etc can function as independent voices and as advocates for the campus that are not constrained by the managerial authority. But they must be used and supported.

These next few months will be critically important and the outcomes will shape the campus for years to come.

The Cronon Affair and the Public Authority

published by dmahrens on April 11, 2011 - 9:02pm

Here are a few things we know about the proposed UW public authority, the Cronon/email affair and issues that are related to each:

  • The UW-Madison Public Authority proposed in the budget repair bill will be governed by 21 trustees, 11 appointed by Governor Walker.
  • Walker has a clearly defined track record of identifying only the most ideologically conservative and presumably loyal appointees. There are numerous examples: a leader of the builders association and long-time critic of the DNR was appointed as its Secretary and a legislator who made a career as an antagonist of the agency was appointed as her Deputy; the CEO of a “union-avoidance” consultant group as the Secretary of the Department of Workforce Development, the head of the Heritage Foundation’s Health Services, Dennis Smith, as the Administrator of the Division of Healthcare Financing. The list goes on and on.
  • Walker has articulated as part of his mission both as Governor and as Milwaukee County Executive to “privatize state services.” This is “politic-speak” for selling publicly created services intended for public use to private interests for maximum profit. As Governor, he immediately privatized the grants-to-business function of the state’s Dept. of Commerce and appointed himself Chairman of the Board of the new entity. Really. In the budget-repair bill he also proposed selling the state’s power plants worth billions of dollars to corporations without the standard bidding process.
  • Although Walker is not the Chair or the Executive Director of the state GOP, he is its leader. No official in the Party- especially the Executive Director- would issue a public statement let alone initiate a controversy of this magnitude unless it is vetted by the Governor’s office.
  • The demand for Bill Cronon’s emails was made by the Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, Stephan Thompson, who previously was on Walker’s staff. Given his prior position, it can be assumed he is the liaison between the Governor’s office and the party.
  • At the time the FOIA request was made, Bill Cronon was (is) the most widely known member of the UW faculty in the nation. In March, he published an op-ed piece in the NY Times that was critical of the Walker administration (one of top ten most e-mailed articles in the week of publication) and authored a blog that had registered more than a half-million hits in a day or two. This is in addition to his towering academic achievements. While, perhaps liberal in his political views, in no sense could he be described as “a person of the Left” or that his political views were a central and constant presence in his academic work.

What is the significance of these facts when taken together? The attack on Cronon is not merely a shot across the bow of UW-Madison but a direct hit. The “use” of Cronon as a target was to send a message to EVERYONE that if the administration can go after him, EVERYONE is fair game. The message is that they don’t care how many op-eds are published in the Times, the Post or the Journal-Sentinel. If they think you’re the enemy they’ll take you down. And it sends a stronger message to anyone who actually is politically active that if we do this to Cronon can you imagine what we will do to you?

While the Chancellor’s office was willing (in part) to defend the records of a University Professor and president-elect of the American Historical Association, they did so witlessly. The UW administration stated essentially that they were uncomfortable with the process but recognized the requirements of the state FOIA law and that faculty and staff were subject to its provisions.

More importantly, the memo from Martin to the UW community avoided discussion of the fact that was obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the case: This was payback for Cronon’s audacious act of criticizing the Walker administration. Indeed, in her letter to the UW Community, she stated that “neither the request nor the absence of a stated motive seemed unusual.” Why then, was it a subject in every major news outlet in the nation and an open letter to the community? Or, was it as Martin frames the issue, just another records request?

If Martin had addressed the context of the FOIA, it would have raised the question: Is this an administration to which we are ready to hand over our governance? Can we be “partners” with this crowd that files a lawsuit to essentially search and seize one’s personal intellectual property for the act of criticizing the head of the state.

Abandoning the ill-considered proposal of a UW Madison public authority will not safeguard the UW faculty and staff from this and other forms of harassment from Walker, his political operatives and bureaucrats. But it will stop them from immediately becoming our governing body. The notion that Walker-conservatives will become “acculturated” to UW-Madison and pull-back their tentacles is wishful thinking. Given the leadership in the Madison community (repeatedly and scornfully acknowledged by Walker) of the protests against the budget bill, there will be more attacks against members of the campus community. However, retaining governance by the Regents will, at least for the next four years when Doyle appointees retain a majority, keep Walker’s trustees hands off of the policy-making controls of the University.

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