GOP contender Scott Walker faces down Wisconsin university faculty

Providence Journal ^ | July 12, 2015 | Noah Bierman

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The president of the board and the UW-Madison chancellor have pledged to maintain tenure and academic freedom. But faculty are skeptical they will have the same ironclad protections against retaliation for controversial research, particularly the type of scholarship that can leave winners and losers in the marketplace.

MADISON, Wis. — First, Gov. Scott Walker defeated public-sector labor unions. Then, he declawed their private-sector counterparts. Now, ahead of his entry into the presidential race, the Wisconsin Republican is staring down another conservative target: college professors.

The trifecta could cement Walker's reputation among conservative Republican primary voters as a bold leader willing to battle entrenched interests of the left in the name of reform.

But faculty at the state's universities, backed by national higher-education groups, say he is risking the quality and prestige of one of the country's leading state universities to fuel his presidential ambitions.

The clash of values echoes many fights that have erupted since Walker took office after the 2010 election. Loud, polarizing debates have punctuated the Walker years. The attention they received has catapulted him into the front ranks of those seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

His campaign is largely built around his image as a fighter for conservative causes who has won key battles.

In this capital city, the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus, long seen as a liberal bastion, sits less than a mile from the state Capitol building, and the lines between the conservative governor and his liberal opponents are sharply drawn.

Professors fume at what they regard as a multipronged attack. Walker's allies say he and the Republican-majority Legislature are carrying out a mandate for reform on behalf of beleaguered taxpayers.

The Legislature is set to vote on a budget that includes a $250 million cut to higher education over the next two years, roughly an 11 percent reduction in state support for the university system.

More attention has focused on a provision of the budget that removes tenure protection from state law, leaving it in the hands of a board of regents appointed largely by Walker. The proposal would also broaden the power of administrators to eliminate academic positions and departments in the name of efficiency.

The president of the board and the UW-Madison chancellor have pledged to maintain tenure and academic freedom. But faculty are skeptical they will have the same ironclad protections against retaliation for controversial research, particularly the type of scholarship that can leave winners and losers in the marketplace.

Chancellor Rebecca Blank told the faculty that the controversy means the school would have a "bull's-eye on our back" in competing with other institutions for recruits and defending against poaching by rivals. Blank pledged that she would not accept a tenure policy that falls short of peer universities' protections, and urged professors to band together in preserving the university's reputation.

"I know that there are a lot of angry and a lot of very worried and a lot of very upset people," she told faculty members during one of several campus forums. "My staff can tell you just how angry I've been at various times over the last five to six months.

"My role is not to be angry," she said. "My role is to figure out how we move forward."

Blank said she had been frustrated by headlines declaring the end of tenure. Wisconsin is unusual in enshrining tenure protections for university professors in state statute; at nearly all public universities, tenure is set by administrative policies.

The board of regents has approved language that will keep tenure protections in place even if they are removed from state law. But faculty also worry about another section of the budget bill — inserted by the Legislature — that relaxes the ability to lay off professors because of budget issues or changes "deemed necessary" to academic programs.

That sort of open-ended phrase could be used to undermine academic freedom, some faculty members say.

"As long as this section exists, what we have is not tenure," said David Vanness, a population health sciences professor.

Regina Millner, president of the regents who oversee all 26 of the state's colleges and universities, said repeatedly during an interview that she and her colleagues were conscious of the need to protect academic freedom for numerous reasons, including the imperative to compete for top faculty talent. Walker, she said, was trying to provide more financial flexibility to the system's leaders during tight budget times.

"Walker came into office as a reform candidate," said Millner, who was appointed to her seven-year term by him in 2012. "He's comfortable with reform, and he understands that there's going to be a certain amount of angst with any reform."

State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, says faculty members are politicizing the issue by claiming that the tenure changes are more dramatic than they are.

But Walker, too, has dramatized the issue, saying earlier this year that the changes he was proposing for state colleges would be "the Act 10 of higher education," a reference to the bill passed early in his first term to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

The drive to pass Act 10 continues to define Walker's governorship to both supporters and detractors.

In the months after the law passed, protesters filled the Capitol building beyond capacity and unions led an unsuccessful campaign to recall the governor. These days, protesters still gather almost daily under the rotunda, but their ranks are down to a trickle. Recently, about 20 showed up at lunchtime, singing "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and unfurling a maroon banner with a fractured outline of the state map atop a broken heart.

In March, Walker also signed a "right to work" bill that curbed the power of private-sector unions.

Vos said he initially viewed academic tenure as an outdated notion but has been persuaded that professors need some protection, citing the example of conservatives who work on campuses dominated by "die-hard liberals." But he insisted that tenure should not be simply "permanent job protection," particularly for professors who are unproductive or work in outdated fields.

"Now, if Governor Walker wants to talk about that on the campaign trail, I guess he can do that," Vos said. "But I don't think that's the reason for it."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The president of the board and the UW-Madison chancellor have pledged to maintain tenure and academic freedom. But faculty are skeptical they will have the same ironclad protections against retaliation for controversial research, particularly the type of scholarship that can leave winners and losers in the marketplace.

Read "grant money" to fund progressive "studies" that market policy and legislation!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is poised to win a huge victory on education as the state legislature passed a budget that repeals state tenure guarantees while also slashing the budget of the University of Wisconsin.

The victory was enunciated by the acquiescence of the university, which recognized its defeat by passing a spending plan that implements Walker’s cuts. All that remains is for Walker to consummate his victory by affixing his signature to the budget.

The two-year, $73 billion budget approved Thursday makes a host of changes Walker has sought in the realm of education. Wisconsin’s school voucher program is expanded, and $250 million in funding is taken from the University of Wisconsin. That’s down from the $300 million cut Walker originally sought, but still a substantial haircut.

Bowing to the fait accompli, later on Thursday the University of Wisconsin approved its own budget, implementing the big cuts expected of it. About 400 positions will be laid off or will go unfilled, and the university’s budgets no money for pay hikes. The school’s situation is made tougher because the legislature has also frozen in-state tuition....." Source - The Daily Caller

[Cowboy Bob]

If Walker is not elected President or Vice-President, I would at least want to see his as Secretary of Education or Secretary of Labor.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Left is alarmed by "attacks" on their "academic" power - the foundation of progressive policy enshrined in the Wisconsin Idea (a condition that is being watched around the country by other universities who operate their institutions likewise).

"The Wisconsin Idea is the policy developed in the American state of Wisconsin that fosters public universities' contributions to the state: "to the government in the forms of serving in office, offering advice about public policy, providing information and exercising technical skill, and to the citizens in the forms of doing research directed at solving problems that are important to the state and conducting outreach activities". A second facet of the philosophy is the effort "to ensure well-constructed legislation aimed at benefiting the greatest number of people". During the Progressive Era, proponents of the Wisconsin Idea saw the state as "the laboratory for democracy", resulting in legislation that served as a model for other states and the federal government.............." [Worth a full read - 3 pronged: "Education-Politics-Media"]

[Pontiac]

This gives me a glimmer of hope that we could be seeing the reversal of Left’s dominance in academia.

I pray that it is true.

[nathanbedford]

Academic tenure is justified as a kind of ivory tower First Amendment. The argument goes that we must insulate Socrates from the mob, from the Pharisees, and from the government. Tenure like the First Amendment, the argument goes, is needed for unpopular speech even for obnoxious and repugnant speech because popular speech needs no protection. Further, the ivory covered campus is designed to be a petri dish of contentious ideas which might be very unpopular but which need protection.

The problem is we ask the taxpayer to fund a never ending demand for higher wages and richer retirements. The first amendment does not require the taxpayers to underwrite free speech. Let's look at an academic campus.

Is it likely that chemistry professors, physic professors, math professors or any hard science professor needs First Amendment protection? Well, possibly if he is speaking out about climate change. Ironically, he will need that protection only if he is speaking out against the prevailing academic doctrine favoring man made climate change. What does climate change have to do with chemistry 101, usually actually taught by a nontenured teaching assistant, in which the students must learn their tables? Very little or nothing. Why does a teacher at that level need tenure? He does not. Yet a professor teaching at that level gets tenure.

What about the professor who is teaching an advanced class concerning climate change? He is admittedly embarking on a controversial area of study and the argument goes that he needs protection to speak truth to power. We have already noted that it is only a professor who speaks out against climate change needs protection in today's environment. Why should that be so? Because the powers that be who the control 95% or so of our universities have one view on climate change. They are the same ones who hire and fire professors to teach chemistry 101 or to teach climate change at an elevated level. They have acquired a death grip over the faculty to the degree that our colleges resemble Soviets more than institutions dedicated to discovering scientific truth. We have invested in unnamed, unelected bureaucrats (because when professors act as bureaucrats they should be called such) who wield unsupervised, unaccountable power in secret to control personnel and therefore to control the subject matter of our tax funded educational system.

If the issue were only climate change we might have to concede the possibility that science is all on the side of the prevailing opinion on campus. But it is not just climate change rather it is every single scientific, political, cultural, economic or sexual issue which currently excites the interest of our teaching class. In everything at all times there is a deadly unanimity, a political correctness which has descended over institutions which justify their existence, as well is their right to tenure, because academic freedom is necessary to provide a place where Mavericks can thrive. On every issue all the time these perfectly safe professors are on the Marxist side.

The data are in and it is irrefutable, the Academy is utterly controlled by the left. The practice puts lie to the theory. Exercising a death grip on hiring and firing, Marxist professors and Marxist administrators ensure that only leftists may feed at the public trough and only leftists will be subsidized to indoctrinate our children.

The system of tenure professorships has perverted its very purpose and it is acting as a shield for a majoritarian ethos on our campuses and a sword against expression of minority opinion. The left would have us view the campus through the prism of the whole of society and regard the campus quadrangle as a besieged island of enlightenment in a sea of reactionary know nothingness dominating the general population. A sea of reactionary opinion is another name for democracy. An island of political correctness is another name for intellectual prison.

Yes speech needs protection on campus but tenure and cronyism have converted our campuses into places where political correctness thrives, were only leftist speech is protected and where conservative speech is ruthlessly suppressed.

We say that a preacher who ascends his pulpit to deliver himself not of the sermon but of a political polemic forfeits his claim on the taxpayers as a charitable institution -that is if he is a Caucasian preacher. Yet we do not say that a professor who uses his classroom to unburden himself of a leftist screed forfeits his claim to tax payer subsidies. Quite to the contrary his academic cronies have ensured that taxpayer subsidies will sustain him throughout his teaching career and even into retirement unto death's door. Note, it is his academic cronies who have thus favored him with public money and not the taxpayers or their representatives. If we abhor taxation without representation equally should we abhor appropriation without representation.

[DoodleDawg]

...president of the regents who oversee all 26 of the state's colleges and universities...

Wisconsin has 6.5 million people and 26 separate universities. Kansas has 2.9 million and they have 6. Have you thought of closing a dozen or so?

[Popman]

-——Wisconsin is unusual in enshrining tenure protections for university professors in state statute; at nearly all public universities, tenure is set by administrative policies.-——

So Walker is basically doing what is usual ....

The UW endowment is two billion plus dollars so a 250 million haircut over two years is not a huge number

[j. earl carter]

If we abhor taxation without representation equally should we abhor appropriation without representation.

In Ohio, the state subsidized universities are run by boards of trustees. The trustees are appointed by the governor (other states probably do things similarly to Ohio). So, the people do have a voice through their elected governor. The problem is that the governor never involves himself in the selection of trustees (at least it hasn't happened in the 20+ years that I have been paying attention). The governor always acts as a rubber stamp. The trustees of each university are allowed to select their own replacements.

In Ohio, the ability to control the universities already exists. Yet, I have never heard anyone mention it.

[exDemMom]

Regina Millner, president of the regents who oversee all 26 of the state's colleges and universities, said repeatedly during an interview that she and her colleagues were conscious of the need to protect academic freedom for numerous reasons, including the imperative to compete for top faculty talent.

This argument would be more credible if university humanities/social studies/etc. departments weren't socialist echo chambers. The only place to get away from political correctness is in the hard sciences and math. Universities should not be socialist indoctrination facilities.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

..So Walker is basically doing what is usual ......

Really?

[KC_Conspirator]

Right, like the freedom to throw tax payer money down the drain for their political causes. Good for Walker.

[centurion316]

Higher education, quite deliberately and utterly, destroyed academic freedom and having done it, they are now fighting to protect the mechanisms that ensure that they will sustain the oppressive environment that is today’s campus. Tenure gave the left the weapons to take control of the facility, and later the administration. It remains the tool that provides the discipline to control power.

I was a witness to how they did it while I was in graduate school. As an active duty Army officer enroute to the facility at West Point, I was an odd duck to say the least. I was among those fighting for tenure track, but I not in the fight and therefore had a vantage point to see and hear all without anyone really paying attention to me. This was a time when the World War II generation was approaching retirement and the Baby Boom was jockeying for those flood of replacement tenure appointment. It was not a fair fight.

The left was organized, ruthless, and determined. They worked together to dominate the search committees and the tenure deliberations. They knew who they wanted and they ensure that anyone not reliably left wing had no chance. My terrain was the Geography and the Geology Departments and the contrast between the two was telling. The Geographers included both cultural and physical adherents, but the culturists held sway. Even serious physical research scientists were subjected to a political filter. Geology was more conservative and controlled by the hard rock geologists, so they changed more slowly. But, over time, especially after I left graduate school, they surrendered as well.

At the University of Colorado, these two disciplines were at the national forefront of the climate change, in part because of the interaction with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and NOAA’s Boulder offices. Those serious researchers, who believe in collecting data and following the scientific method, were eased out by people who had a political agenda. Once they had tenure, they were able to pursue their political goals.

Academic Freedom no longer exists and it was destroyed by the Academy. Unfortunately, this change in Wisconsin will be primarily symbolic. The statute support may disappear, but the rest of the structure will remain and it will still be controlled by the Leftists who run universities.

[Verginius Rufus]

What are “outdated fields”? Ancient history? Medieval history? Greek and Latin?

[Verginius Rufus]

That may be true at some universities but not at all.

As one of the senior people in my department, I have seen a lot of searches and don't remember any case of a candidate being questioned about his or her political beliefs or ideology, and I don't remember ever being asked about mine when I was on the job market. My dissertation director (now deceased) was very conservative but he had been hired (in a humanities field) by what was already one of the most left-wing universities in the country.

[blueunicorn6]

They don’t need to directly ask you your political persuasion.

Remember when it was said that Obama had a huge database mining operation?

They look at what magazines you read. They look at what groups you belong to. They see if you’ve donated money to a certain party. They look at where you live.

The Democrats can, with very good accuracy, predict your political leaning.

They can also do it in your interview.

They have had years to develop their questions.

[centurion316]

The question is your experience or mine the exception. I don’t know, but what I observed was and still is repeated across both public and private universities. I would be surprised to hear questions or discussion about political beliefs in the formal process, it operates in a much more subtle fashion, but still happens none the less.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Big Education is the Left’s hallowed institution that preaches their green, social justice doctrine.

[nathanbedford]

Yes, and I would add the bloated University budgets are just one more place where leftists get taxpayers to fund their propaganda and their agenda.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Darn right - a reliable Marxist treasure trove infused with grant money "awarded" to generate policy and marketing for Leftists - fiefdoms built within the hallowed halls of academia - like Paul Ehrlich's [The Population Bomb - 1968, 50 years at Stanford (collaborator with John P. Holdren, Obama's "science and technology" adviser).

June 19, 2015: Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here

"........Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and species loss....."