David Michael Miller
Recently, the University of Wisconsin System regents met and passed some astoundingly awful resolutions. First, they radically changed the process by which campus chancellors and other top-level positions are selected.
Most of the news coverage focused on the fact that applicants no longer need tenure or a terminal degree to apply for these jobs. However, the changes to the hiring committees could end up having a much bigger impact. The regents will now occupy a full half of the positions and have absolute power in selecting the other five. This policy almost totally shuts out the voices of the faculty, staff and students at the campus level and is completely out of line with higher education hiring practices across the country.
The other big change was the adoption of a policy that unconstitutionally limits student speech on campus. This over-the-top attack on the First Amendment made national headlines.
Combine these two votes with last year’s attacks on tenure and shared governance and you have a board of regents actively working to undo more than a century of academic excellence across the UW System campuses. State legislators love to take potshots at the universities but at least those candidates are — give or take some gerrymandered maps — democratically elected.
As campuses seek to innovate with online course offerings and groundbreaking research, these draconian policies made by an appointed, unelected board make it more difficult for campuses to attract the brightest students and retain top faculty. Would you send your kids to a campus where they might get expelled for speaking their mind?
A hostile board with a lack of transparency makes it difficult to trust any actions coming out of the UW System administration. On the surface, President Ray Cross’s proposed merger between UW colleges and four-year campuses seems inoffensive outside of an overly hasty timeline. However, the devil is in the details and the regents love to withhold details. For example, the merger brings Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television from UW Extension into Cross’s administration. If Cross isn’t willing to defend tenure or the First Amendment from the regents, is he really going to stand up for public media?
There are two reasons why the regents have become more aggressive in the last couple of years. The first is a nationwide war waged by conservatives on public universities. Even though the Republican Party controls the White House, both chambers of Congress and a majority of state legislatures, they need a boogeyman that proves that conservatives are the true repressed minority. Professors and undergraduates have become that boogeyman.
The second and far more important reason why the regents are pushing a hardline agenda is because the board is now almost exclusively made up of appointees of Gov. Scott Walker. Almost all regents serve seven-year terms. While Walker has been in office since 2011, the last few appointees of Jim Doyle finished their terms in 2016, leaving Tony Evers — superintendent of public instruction and Democratic gubernatorial candidate — as the lone voice of dissent on a board full of puppets.
Let me be clear: Scott Walker is the sole agent responsible for the attacks and erosion of the UW via his proxies on the board of regents. They will continue to carry out his agenda as long as he has the sole power to appoint new regents. They will continue to damage the legacy, reputation and work of campuses across the state.
Things will continue to get worse if Walker is reelected. Chancellors have broad power on their campuses and the regents will eagerly hire candidates who don’t understand higher education or, worse, are openly antagonistic to it. The board will continue to upend other university policy, without public hearing or input, only emerging for a public vote after a consensus has been reached behind closed doors.
If Walker is reelected, expect other schools to poach even more faculty. I wouldn’t blame them in the slightest.
The only way to save the UW System as we know it is to defeat Scott Walker in 2018. A Democratic governor can start appointing new regents, cutting off the bleeding and slowly healing the board. They would make it harder for the conservative majority to pass these secretive policies under the radar. By 2022, Walker’s appointees would no longer make up a majority of the board.
Undoing the most odious work of the Legislature requires holding both houses of the Legislature and the governorship. Changing policies of the board of regents only requires the appointment of a new set of regents.
Defeating Walker will be no easy task but it must be done to save the UW. The only alternative is sending my kid to college in Minnesota.
