University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman.
Universities of Wisconsin's Jay Rothman, above, brokered a deal with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
Well, you can’t say it’s been boring.
Let’s recount this momentous week in the history of the Universities of Wisconsin.
On Friday, Dec. 8, Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman announced a grand compromise he had worked out with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Under the agreement, the UW would get $800 million that Vos had been withholding as he demanded that the UW dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But Rothman’s deal didn’t require the university to eliminate any of the DEI positions. It required only that 43, or about a third, of those positions be retitled to “student success” positions. It’s unclear if their job descriptions or duties would change, but in a Wisconsin State Journal story UW-Madison’s chief diversity officer, LaVar Charleston said, “I can assure you I’m not going anywhere. In fact, under this agreement, no one who does this work is going anywhere.”
That seemed to me like a pretty darn good deal, but in an emergency meeting called for the following Saturday morning, the Board of Regents rejected it on a 9-8 vote, with all of the nine nays being appointments of Gov. Tony Evers. Five of Evers’ appointments did vote for the compromise while three holdovers from Gov. Scott Walker (Regents serve seven-year terms) also voted for it.
Controversy ensued. Democrats, led by the Legislature’s Black Caucus, the Associated Students of Madison and other liberal groups praised the vote while the business community (because they badly want a new engineering building that was part of the deal), Republicans and obscure centrist bloggers for alternative papers were aghast. The Regents got email.
On Tuesday of the following week, Dec. 12, the Regents met in closed session, which by the way, was probably improperly noticed. I haven’t seen any reports on what they discussed, but it’s entirely possible that it included Rothman’s resignation. Student Regent Evan Brenkus told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Rothman had threatened to resign if the deal wasn’t approved.
The following evening, the Regents met again, in open session, to reconsider Saturday’s vote. This time they approved the deal on a vote of 11-6. In a courageous move, Regent President Karen Walsh, Vice President Amy Bogost and UW-Parkside student Regent Jennifer Staton changed their votes. My guess is they’ll be hearing from liberals.
It will take a while for the dust to settle, but I think, in the long run this will be very good for the UW. Let me offer three reasons.
First, the UW got everything it wanted. They get the engineering building plus more money for badly needed capital projects. They get $32 million that had been cut over the DEI issue. They get pay raises for UW employees, the same as other state employees, that Vos had withheld over DEI. And they get some extra cash from a tuition reciprocity program with Minnesota. And for all that, all they really gave up was the retitling of some DEI positions that may very well end up doing the very same things they’ve been doing.
Those opposed to the deal complain that the UW should have gotten all that anyway because most of it was already approved and it was being held up by Vos alone. But that’s ignoring political reality. I’m no fan of Vos, but he’s the second most powerful man in state government and, on some days, it’s an open question as to whether he’s really second fiddle to Evers or not. You can’t just wish him away or insist that this just isn’t right. It’s the political reality and so you can’t afford to ignore it.
Second, the deal suggests that the UW might start dealing with that aforementioned political reality. It’s a safe assumption that the new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court will impose new, more fair legislative district maps, probably in time for next fall’s elections. But even under those new maps, Republicans are likely to have at least 55 of 99 Assembly seats and at least 17 of 33 seats in the Senate. That’s what Evers’ Peoples’ Maps Commission came up with when it tried to draw the fairest maps possible.
So, for the foreseeable future, Republicans will control the purse strings. To insist that the UW should be able to just go its own way, while ignoring the concerns of Republicans, will result in the continuing degradation of the university. Simply put, like it or not, they have to find a way to work with the likes of Vos. Rothman seems to be the right guy for that task.
Third, while I think he overstates them (“cancerous” is too strong a word), I think Vos’ concerns over DEI are justified and reflect similar concerns among a strong majority of Wisconsinites. I think liberals don’t appreciate how much damage the illiberal and radical views of thinkers like Ibram X. Kendi (whether or not most Wisconsinites have ever heard of him) hurt the DEI cause. How many Wisconsinites, do you suppose, can get behind the notion that, “the only remedy for past discrimination is present discrimination?” How many of us would support the idea that, “to love capitalism is to love racism?”
On the other hand, diversity officer Charleston made the point that DEI is about more than just race. These programs also support students with disabilities, veterans and really anyone who might have challenges navigating campus or fitting in and being successful. It’s a point I’ve made frequently.
My own view is that DEI should be closely examined to explicitly reject Kendi’s “anti-racist” intolerance. Keep what’s good about DEI — and a lot is — but get rid of the stuff that brings down the whole program.
I love my alma mater. I want the UW to flourish. I want it to be flush with cash but I want that money to go to direct instruction, to research and to scholarships for deserving students, not to DEI and other administrative overhead. If you really want to do something meaningful for diversity, then take some of the roughly 3,000 new student slots opened up by a new, bigger engineering building and make an all out effort to award lots of them to students of color and women. Because if any profession is in need of diversity and is well-compensated and influential, it’s engineering.
The Rothman-Vos deal takes some steps forward on all those fronts. It wasn’t a close call and it should have been approved on an overwhelming vote the first time. But credit 11 Regents, and especially the three who changed their votes, for figuring it out before this opportunity was missed.
To survive and flourish the UW had to change. It could not go on being an increasingly far-left bastion in a state that is much more centrist — and that mismatch goes well beyond just DEI. Basically, the politics and profile of the UW has to better align with those of the state.
So, it was a crowded and historic week for the UW and I believe in the end, and after lots of twists and turns, it was a very good one.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
