The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

God and Man at UW-Madison

Posted on | May 9, 2025 | No Comments

MADISON, Wisconsin
Today is the big day for son Jefferson and, because of what’s called “diploma privilege,” his graduation from the University of Wisconsin Law School means he automatically qualifies for the state bar, without having to pass a bar exam. However, he plans to practice in another state, so he’ll still be going through the bar-exam ordeal there. Yet, qualifying for the Wisconsin bar means that he gets to call himself an attorney right away, which counts for something as these things are reckoned.

Inside the ornate Wisconsin State Capitol

Looking up State Street toward the Capitol

After careful consideration (see “A Happy Week for the Family”), we decided against the toll-free route through Chicago, and instead paid a toll to avoid the new Pope’s hometown. The revised route was also shorter, and we were checked into our hotel by 1:30 Central time. Jefferson was busy taking his last exam, so we met up with his girlfriend and walked from our hotel over to the Capitol, a splendid and impressive bit of Beaux-Arts architecture. After gawking at the elaborate wonder of it all, we then walked down State Street toward the UW campus. If you’ve never been to Madison, let me tell you that State Street is one of America’s great party zones. There are dozens of bars, plus restaurants and boutiques of various kinds. It was a pleasant walk on a sunny spring day, and then we got down to the campus and waited until Jefferson could join us, whereupon we went to eat at a Mediterranean restaurant.

The boy’s a babe-magnet.

The Mediterranean Cafe is nice, and I recommend the Roti Chicken. What I do not recommend, however, is university faculty surrending to Trump Derangement Syndrome, as is the case in Wisconsin:

University of Wisconsin-Madison professors have joined their colleagues at Big Ten schools to formally say they’re frustrated by the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and efforts to dictate policy on campus.
This week the university’s Faculty Senate, a group of more than 2,200 professors on campus, voted to approve a “Mutual Defense Compact.” The vote followed similar efforts by faculty on other Big Ten campuses.
The resolution urges Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin to help establish a “Mutual Academic Defense Compact.” Under the compact, all participants would “commit meaningful funding to a shared or distributed defense fund.”
The money would provide support to any member under direct political or legal infringement. . . .
On April 22, Mnookin was one of about 300 college and university presidents to sign a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” . . .
Last month, UW-Madison and several of the other Big Ten universities were included in a letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights warning that there would be potential action concerning alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.

Talk about “climbing up on the cross”! So eager are these academics to be seen as martyrs of “government overreach and political interference” that they’ve joined a “Mutual Defense Compact” to defend against a threat that would seem to be entirely hypothetical, if not indeed imaginary. Has the Trump administration so far taken even a nickel of federal funding away from UW-Madison? And if UW-Madison is not tolerating “antisemitic harassment and discrimination,” what have they got to worry about? It’s just a symbolic “resistance” gesture.

It is worth noting that Trump carried Wisconsin by a margin of 30,000 votes last November, winning 59 of the state’s 72 counties. Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature. Why can’t the faculty at UW-Madison read the writing on the political wall? Don’t they care about democracy? Do the faculty imagine that making left-wing “resistance” gestures will encourage the state’s voters to repent their Trump-leaning tendencies? Because I suspect such gestures will have the opposite effect. As left-leaning as Madison itself may be (Kamala Harris got 75% of the vote in Dane County), most of the state is a lot more Republican and, if you look at the trends, Wisconsin may be following such other Midwest states as Iowa, Missouri and Ohio in going from battleground “purple” to solid GOP “red.” For the faculty of the state university to be spewing Trump hatred is likely to accelerate such a trend. I’m only in town for a graduation ceremony, but nonetheless feel obligated to warn UW-Madison against committing political seppuku.



 

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Category: Education, Family, Wisconsin

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