oflovefaithhopedream

On Monday the Faculty Senate at UW-Madison will vote on HR Design.  The University Committee has crafted a nice resolution supporting the plan, which is great, but the fact is that they do not know what they are supporting . They are acting on faith, a lovely sentiment, but not a realistic one in a Wisconsin where conditions for working families erode daily. Join us in calling on the Director of Human Resources to reveal a written list of changes to the current plan that he intends to ask the executive committee (chancellor, provost, and vice chancellor for administration) to suport. Know. Then Vote. It's a good plan for Monday November 5-- and for Tuesday November 6 too. SIGN NOW

There's much ado in Madison today about the news that the Koch Bros. made a $1.5 million gift to the economics department at Florida State University accompanied by numerous strings , including significant power over faculty hiring. Over at Sifting and Winnowing , professors and students are debating whether or not we should be concerned about this event given the potential the New Badger Partnershi p creates for changing the rules of the game at Madison in ways that could increase authority of a governor-appointed board to make such decisions based on pure economics. One writer, "Patrick," contends that the FSU incident is no big deal, because "I was under the impression this kind of thing has been going on basically forever in one form or another no matter where the funding comes from. Maybe attaching explicit strings to funding like this is a bit more open than usual, but I don’t understand how it’s any different." To some extent, Patrick is right: donors o...