Wisconsin Gets Weirder
Just when it seemed that the political conflict and intrigue over public higher education in Wisconsin could not get any more intense or convoluted, it did. Thrust into the tangled mix of controversy over employee union policies andpotential governance restructuring that have roiled the University of Wisconsin System this winter came word late Thursday of a Republican operative's perceived attack on academic freedom and on one of the university's most visible scholars, which promises to complicate an already combustible situation.
To recap briefly what the last three months had already wrought in Wisconsin: Governor Scott Walker has become a national icon (positively or negatively depends on one's views on the role of the labor movement) for his attack on collective bargaining for public employee unions, including those for professors and graduate students.
And as that drama (which included a virtual shutdown of Wisconsin's legislative process and efforts to recall politicians on both sides of the aisle) was unfolding, Walker endorsed a move by the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus at Madison for greater independence, not only from state regulation but, to the dismay of Wisconsin's other public institutions, from the rest of the university system.
Those developments have created a complicated political dynamic in
