Professors at UW-Madison declared Monday that they have no confidence in the leaders of the University of Wisconsin System…
But probably for different reasons…
…to uphold their cherished outreach mission in the wake of budget cuts and changes to tenure policies that weakened faculty protections.
The UW-Madison Faculty Senate approved the no confidence resolution, which lays out a litany of problems that professors have with the work of UW System President Ray Cross and the system’s Board of Regents over the past year, after more than an hour and a half of debate.
The resolution primarily focuses on new tenure policies the Regents approved this spring, arguing those changes threaten professors’ ability to pursue “risky or controversial” research that could benefit students and the state as a whole. It ends by stating professors have no confidence in Cross and the Regents to defend the UW System’s mission of benefiting the public, known as the Wisconsin Idea, and calling on them to “recommit” to strengthening public universities with adequate state funding.
(SCENE: January 2014.)
GOV. WALKER: Ray, I need a UW system president who will help me dismantle the UW system.
RAY CROSS: Hmm.
GOV. WALKER: We’ll pay you $525,000 a year plus bennies.
RAY CROSS: OK.