The Problem that is Provost Paul DeLuca

Let me tell you, it's an incredible experience to chair a university committee for multiple years, work very hard to serve at the request of your university, produce a thoughtful report with that committee, and then have the Provost of your institution attack it in the media without ever bothering to even speak with you about it.

Welcome to UW-Madison and the passive-aggressive machinations of Provost Paul DeLuca.

UW-Madison has serious problems when it comes to state relations and this Provost has a lot to do with that.  Time and again he has treated the Wisconsin public, its reporters, and its legislators as if they aren't smart enough to merit straight talk about hard issues.  Instead he smirks, waves his hands, and says he doesn't know what all the fuss is about. He dismisses any critique of the university as uninformed, offers "explanations" without any factual basis, and looks away when anyone asks a hard question.

I've witnessed this time and again over the past several years-- through debates over his efforts to instigate the restructuring of the Graduate School, the separation of UW-Madison from UW-System, the Human Resources Design debacle, and most recently as he's attempted to cover his tracks while advancing an enrollment management agenda initiated when Biddy Martin was chancellor, all the while pretending to be simply responding to new demographics. In the most recent example, instead of raising concerns in a professional manner with a university committee on admissions practices with whom he apparently disagrees-- for example by seeking a meeting with its members or the chair (me) --he dismisses the committee's latest report in the media as "narrow and short-sighted" and then blatantly spins the press about the reasons for changing enrollment patterns (see below for more examples).   Just Monday he sat idly by as the same report was presented in Faculty Senate and said nothing.  This is how he treats his faculty.

The evidence is clear.  The words and actions of Provost Paul DeLuca Jr. reveal a lack of commitment to and respect for shared governance, a disturbing paternalism when it comes to racial/ethnic students and the working class (see below for more), and an outright smug elitism when it comes to answering important questions.  He is harming the institution, tarnishing our reputation for sifting and winnowing, and it's long past time for him to move on.


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Want to know more about DeLuca?

Check out what DeLuca said to the Wisconsin State Journal about the reason for the sharp uptick in international student enrollment at UW-Madison in fall 2012.

Here is my letter to the WSJ in response:


Dear Editor,

I appreciate your coverage of the recent report issued by the UW-Madison Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid. But I am mystified by comments made by Provost Paul DeLuca in response.  He reports that the growth in the percent of admitted international students who decided to enroll in UW-Madison this past fall (the “yield rate”) was “unexpected” and there was “no purposefulness to it.”  This statement sharply contrasts with the explicit goals and travels of former Chancellor Biddy Martin, who sought to increase enrollment of international students, and flies in the face of publicly available data.  

This document shows that in 2012, UW-Madison experienced a 4% growth in the rate of applications among international students, and matched that with a one-year increase of 53% in the acceptance rate of those students, jumping from 26.9 to 41.3% between 2011-2012 (the average increase in the acceptance rate over the prior 5 years was 34%). Even if the applicant pool was somehow much more qualified, this decision to accept more international students undoubtedly contributed to the higher representation of them on campus. In addition, 30.6% of those students accepted the offer of admission and enrolled—at a rate that DeLuca found surprising, presumably because the rate in 2011 was 20.5%.  However, the average yield over the prior five years was 30.2%-- almost exactly the yield in the single year 2012! The only way the Provost could have been genuinely surprised by the outcome is if his enrollment management team used just one year of data rather than a longer-term trend to do their planning.  Given their expertise, this seems highly unlikely.

Most troubling, Provost DeLuca made these same statements last fall when asking the UW System Board of Regents to raise the cap on non-resident enrollment, a request that was initiated because of this “surprising” turn of events.  Given our commitment to seeking and reporting the truth at this great research university, these repeated assertions are disconcerting.  The UW can decide its future and its enrollment, but the Wisconsin public deserves transparency and accuracy in reporting about how outcomes are achieved.

After reading all of the stats, you deserve a break so check out these photos from Paul's most recent trip to China!

Then, take a look at what we recommended regarding ending reciprocity for Minnesota students at UW-Madison, and next consider his response.

Notice that DeLuca expresses concern that ending reciprocity would mean only wealthy MN students could apply to Madison, conveniently overlooking the data in our report that indicates that the students from MN are much wealthier than Wisconsin residents to begin with. Table 2 shows that the average family income of a MN student at UW-Madison is $105,000, compared to $80,000 of WI residents at UW-Madison.  In other words, the reciprocity agreement is regressive.

Second, with regard to the concept of ending reciprocity at the flagship, DeLuca says ""Every now and then, someone makes a suggestion like that," DeLuca said. "That's a very narrow, short-sided perspective."  First of all, the phrase is "short-sighted." Second, this proposal hasn't been made before-- this isn't about ending reciprocity for the entire state-- it's about exempting ONE campus--Madison.  Wisconsin is highly unusual in including it's only flagship in such an agreement.  The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has never analyzed the costs of keeping it in-- those costs, Deluca fails to note, add up to $40-50 million a year for Madison.  This is a new idea and not a short-sighted one, all about the long-term ability of Madison to serve the state residents.

And, incredibly, the Provost manages to equate Milwaukee and "diversity" with "students who aren't prepared to succeed" and in the ultimate display of hubris, says it is "immoral" to bring them to Madison.  To be clear-- we recommended that the city of Milwaukee's residents have greater opportunities to attend UW-Madison.  We did not suggest they come unprepared.  But DeLuca lept immediately from Milwaukee to "diversity" to under-preparation.  Amazingly, he suggested that our committee didn't discuss academic preparation needed to succeed at Madison-- again, outright false-- it's mentioned throughout the report-- over and over again.  But DeLuca thinks in terms of test scores, not extraordinary performance, not uncommon life circumstances, and when he sees "color" he thinks "under-prepared." That is really something. Is it any wonder that during his period of "leadership" the percent of students of color on campus has declined, organizations working to improve campus climate have felt entirely unsupported by the university, and morale among faculty and staff of color is reportedly at a low point?

Finally, please note again that this Provost has representation on our committee, saw the report in advance, and yet never raised any questions about the data or the proposals.  Of course, not til the reporters called.

Hard Questions About Teaching at UW-Madison

I received the following letter this morning from a colleague, and with her permission I am reprinting it because  the message it contains is a critical one for our community to hear and discuss.  

Dear Sara,

First, thank you sincerely for your courage to stand up for your convictions, and to air them at the Faculty Senate and in your blog.

Please allow me briefly to share my personal experience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison concerning attitudes toward undergraduate education and inequity in faculty salaries, and how, from my perspective, these affect the budget of the university, the future of our children, and the economics of our State/country.

I have been on the UW-Madison faculty of the School of Medicine and Public Health (Medical School) for twenty years.  The Medical School employs scientists with expertise found nowhere else on the campus (or even the world) and pays salaries that are considerably higher than those of faculty in many other schools here. 

Yet, amazingly, Medical School scientists, despite their unique expertise and high salaries, have minimal-to-no obligation to formally teach in the classroom and no obligation at all to teach undergraduates – in fact, we are discouraged from doing so.  Many of my colleagues earn in excess of $150K and carry out no classroom teaching (though, as suggested by our colleague at the Faculty Senate meeting yesterday, let’s formalize the data).

It is well known that undergraduate-level biology courses at the UW-Madison are bursting at the seams, and are often taught by non-tenured faculty who are outstanding educators. Nevertheless, is it my imagination, or is the university duplicating salaries to pay non-tenured faculty to teach undergraduate courses that salaried tenured faculty could teach, but do not? 

I do not understand the rationale for this. 

I feel that, were the public aware of this situation, they would embrace a solution in which every faculty member on this campus contributes something to undergraduate education, and in which every Department on this campus, whatever its School affiliation, allocates some portion of its budget to formal undergraduate classroom teaching. 

Why can’t we all roll up our sleeves and help undergraduates get more for their tuition dollars?  In the Medical School, a relatively small number of courses is taught to medical students- the hundreds of surplus science faculty within this School could contribute to the large undergraduate biology courses, bringing down class numbers from the hundreds to 20-30.  We can also carry out the jobs of teaching assistants, and/or offer tutorials to supplement lectures and labs.   I am not asking medical doctors to do this, but the scientists - we know this stuff.   

Unfortunately, there is great resistance in the Medical School to teaching undergraduates.  I spent two years chairing a task force within the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center (SCRMC) to develop an undergraduate Stem Cell Sciences (SCS) Certificate.  The SCRMC consists of a campus-wide faculty with expertise in various aspects of stem cell biology.  My committee decided that the most appropriate administrative home for the SCS Certificate would be my Department of Cell and Regenerative Biology within the Medical School. 

Our request for help to administer the Certificate was turned down by Deans Robert Golden and Rick Moss, on the basis that we do not have the resources to be involved in undergraduate education.  Yet, undergraduates work in our laboratories in the Medical School; their labor fuels our research programs and grants.

I then approached Interim Chancellor David Ward for help, who sent me to Provost Paul DeLuca who sent me to Dr. Aaron Brower.  Rather than support the Stem Cell Certificate for undergraduates, Dr. Brower’s suggestion was that we create a Capstone course, in which recent graduates would pay for a short-term course in Stem Cell Sciences. In essence, squeeze the recent graduates and their families out of more money post-graduation, having already diminished the value of their four years of tuition dollars by ignoring their need for a formal experience in Stem Cell Sciences as undergraduates.

Fifteen years after Dr. Jamie Thomson’s report of the isolation of human embryonic stem cells, there is neither a course in Stem Cell Biology for undergraduates at the UW-Madison nor a Certificate in Stem Cell Sciences.   It is not for want of trying; rather, it is because most of the stem cell expertise lies within a Medical School that does not support undergraduate teaching. Under the circumstances, my SCRMC Education Committee is offering the best we can to undergraduates in the hope that it will help them with job recruitment:  an unofficial letter from Dr. Tim Kamp, Director of the SCRMC, stating that a small number of courses was taken which included some reference to the concepts of stem cell biology.

As my daughter’s graduating class from West High School are about to enter college, neither she nor many of her friends will attend the UW-Madison, despite the counselors' best efforts to direct them to the UW System schools. Rather, they will spread out to private LACs, most on the East coast, where teaching is a priority. Thus, the statistics that you presented at yesterday’s Faculty Senate meeting on the ~10% decline in the number of Wisconsin residents attending the UW-Madison over the past decade was striking – what is the reason for that decline? Does lack of access to teaching by expert faculty, and thus, providing less for more money, have anything to do with it?

Now, as I am daring publicly to reveal that many of our faculty do not teach or teach very little, despite their large salaries, I wonder what action the taxpayers and our State legislators will take?  Are undergraduate tuition dollars at this university, which keep increasing, providing the most bang for the buck?  From my perspective, the answer is a resounding "no".   The State of Wisconsin can, and should, demand so much more from us.

Sincerely,

Karen Downs

Professor, Department of Cell and Regenerative Biology

University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health

Dear Chancellor Ward

The following letter from Chad Alan Goldberg, Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was delivered at today's Faculty Senate.

Chancellor Ward declined to respond, other than to say "Thank you for the letter. Yes, I agree."

                                                  ******

In regard to the nonacademic misconduct charges facing ten students who participated in a non-violent sit-in in the your office on April 29 to protest the university's refusal to terminate its contract with Palermo Pizza—

Wouldn’t you agree that political protest differs from ordinary cases of misconduct because protest plays a positive and constructive role in educating the campus community and drawing attention to campus problems that need resolution?

Furthermore, in light of the positive and constructive role that political protest plays on campus, wouldn’t you agree that the administration should avoid even the appearance of misusing the student code of conduct to punish and suppress political criticism, dissent, and protest?

Given that a range of penalties is possible in cases of misconduct, don’t you agree that the draconian punishments with which the students have been threatened, including suspension and expulsion, are disproportionate to the offense?

Wouldn’t you agree that faculty members, including colleagues like Lydia Zepeda who are involved in shared governance bodies like the Labor Codes Licensing Compliance Committee, should be able to speak out about troubling matters on campus and to criticize administration policy without being personally attacked in the press when they do so?

Lastly, don’t you agree that a wise administrator would avoid heavy-handed and unfair responses to student protest and faculty criticism that will only escalate the situation and deepen acrimony and bitterness on campus?

                                       *******************

I stand with these students, and with Chad and many other faculty who support them. Let Chancellor Ward know it's time to do the right thing (). And please support our students and communicate your concerns directly to Dean of Students Lori Berquam (lberquam@studentlife.wisc.edu) and Assistant Dean Bryan Bain (bbain@studentlife.wisc.edu).

Not in Our Names

I have said it before and will say it again:  Please do not conflate the beliefs and actions of University faculty, students, or staff with the beliefs and actions of the Administrators.

Today I am flat-out embarrassed by the possibility that anyone might think that the educators, staff, or students of UW-Madison uniformly support the latest shenanigans perpetrated by our administration.  Three such action are especially revolting.

1. Administrators sent threatening letters to our students who are working diligently to ensure that those "in charge" uphold the ethical code of conduct governing UW-Madison's business relationships, rather than kowtow to the business owners of Milwaukee.   More on that in the coming days.

2. The Interim Chancellor played "holier than thou" in a reprehensible letter published Friday about the words of a faculty member, Lydia Zepeda, chair of the shared governance committee on Labor Codes Licensing Compliance. He used the race card against her, calling into question a statement that makes complete and utter sense--and in doing so suggests that he is allowed to stand in judgement of what is "becoming" of shared governance leaders.

3. Tomorrow, Administrators will issue a press announcement in which it will attempt to deflect critique of UW-Madison's substantial rainy day fund, by asking campus "leaders" to show all of the ways in which the money is being used for "good cause." You can bet that the announcement will say nothing about the fact that the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates has failed to address students' major needs, including removing bottlenecks in course access, because the money has been distributed in non-transparent ways, including contributing to this rainy day fund.  Try to look inside Madison's budget-- try asking "what's the real cost of an undergraduate education" and how does this compare to the price being charged? You'll get nowhere.  Defensive budgeting may be expected given the behavior of the Legislature, but it remains detrimental to all of the university's publics.

Sadly, you'll likely see little of our internal dissent revealed at tomorrow's Faculty Senate meeting because shared governance, constrained as it is by fear and conservatism all around us, will be a short and sweet "front" to what's really going on.  Amazingly, this is the last meeting we'll hold until OCTOBER, showing you just how seriously this system is taken.  In the meantime, a new Chancellor and her people will come in, take over, and make a million decisions while most of us are scattered elsewhere, working frantically to get our research done.  Come fall, no doubt more surprises will be revealed.

As he leaves this second term of office, I am left wondering: Why isn't Chancellor Ward choosing to leave the University the proud, ethical institution it has the opportunity to be?  Why not do right by the exploited workers of Palermo's? Why not praise his students and faculty for speaking truth to power in this terrifying age of attacks on academic freedom?  Why not push the subsequent UW Administration towards greater transparency, not teach them how to hide?  Why act like one of the crowd, rather than a leader for the greater good? Carpe diem, Chancellor.

A Letter to Chancellor Ward

This letter went to Ward this morning.  Yesterday's Capital Times noted that a key issue here is a failure on the Administration's part to listen and communicate with campus the same way it does with business. I couldn't agree more.

May 3, 2013

Dear Chancellor Ward,

We are deeply troubled by your latest statement on Palermo’s Pizza, in which you conveyed a continued refusal to acknowledge the findings of the National Labor Relations Board and Worker Rights Consortium. UW-Madison has a history of upholding our Code of Conduct, which the university adopted for a reason.

You have repeatedly claimed to not have enough information to take action toward Palermo’s. This is despite the fact that last November, the National Labor Relations Board found Palermo’s in violation of numerous counts of violating federal labor law, including worker intimidation, physically blocking workers from going on strike, and illegally terminating 11 workers. Though the NLRB may have absolved Palermo’s of other charges, the threshold for warranting a contract cut is one violation. Additionally, on March 11, another unfair labor practice charge has been filed to the NLRB involving the firing of a worker for their union activity.

In addition to the NLRB decision, the Worker Rights Consortium, after an investigation of the Palermo’s plant, determined the company to be in violation of our university Code of Conduct, which establishes a higher standard of labor practices than the NLRB. To be clear, the Worker Rights Consortium performs their inspections contingent upon international labor law, and not the National Labor Relations Act.

We would like to remind you that the Worker Rights Consortium, on February 5th, 2013 recommended: “The WRC concluded that the company must take two key steps to comply with university codes of conduct. First, Palermo must promptly reinstate the striking employees it terminated or permanently replaced employees, with full back pay.” Palermo’s has made no effort to remedy neither the charges of the NLRB, nor the Worker Rights Consortium.

While you claim to be ‘deeply engaged on this issue,’ and to ‘have discussed this issue repeatedly with students, faculty, staff, and campus governance,’ you seem to have a misconstrued impression of what discussion actually entails. Members of the Student Labor Action Coalition first approached you on this issue in a letter on September 24, 2012. In the over seven months that have passed since then, we have consistently written to update you on the situation, with no response from your office.

On Monday, April 29th, students sat-in in your office because for over 200 days you have brazenly ignored our attempts to engage in a conversation on this issue, but even then, you chose to arrest these students, rather than engage in a dialogue with them. This was also your response in 1999 and 2000, when students raised the issue of worker rights, and now you have successfully cemented your legacy at UW-Madison as an anti-worker, anti-student Chancellor. Despite your overly severe reaction to the students who occupied the anteroom to your office on Monday, we will continue to defend the moral compass of the UW-Madison from your efforts to tarnish it.

Sincerely,

UWMAD@Palermo’s Coalition

AERA Today, and AERA Tomorrow

The annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association just wrapped up, an enormous event attended by something like 15,000 scholars from across the world. It was, as always, overwhelming.  This time, however, in a mainly positive way thanks to the efforts of the incredibly attentive and creative Kris Renn.

Since Kris worked so hard to make the 2013 AERA far better than AERAs of the past, I want to honor that by noting some of the best changes, and proposing some additional innovations for the future.

The Latest & Greatest of AERA:

1. Free Wifi everywhere. This year, for the first time, in every space of the conference we were able to get online and participate in Twitter chats, send each other papers in real time, and convey follow-up thanks immediately. This was no easy feat, since the conference was spread across multiple hotels rather than a single convention center.  The Wifi was easy to find, easy to access, and much much appreciated.

2. Twitter. Wow, they really took this seriously. There was a very active @AERA2013 Conference tweeter (very nice grad student), multiple hashtags, handles on the name tags, and active encouragement to engage even before the conference began.  The back channel discussions were the highlight of the conference, especially during Arne Duncan's talk.

3. Doing more for the community. The most difficult part of this meeting was the sharp contrast between the theme "Education and Poverty" and our daily actions of inhabiting expensive spaces and places while people begged on the street outside.  To its credit, the organizers created opportunities for charitable giving and volunteering in San Francisco, and canceled the annual reception.

4. Trying new formats. This will be the AERA where I learned about and performed an "Ignite" talk, and heard music played before sessions for the first time. There were many new things attempted, and from what I heard they mainly worked out.

5. The app. A big congrats on making it possible to do without the paper program!

Looking to the Future:

1. Give back with our greatest skill-- expertise. Unfortunately, while clearly well-intentioned, this year's efforts to do more for the community also reminded us that charity can be a form of violence.  It was also not very effective, and somewhat embarrassing-- the donations to GLIDE lagged far behind what was anticipated, making us look stingy.  Instead, I think a future conference could capitalize on the opportunity created by so many education scholars concentrated in one place over a week's time by pairing local community organizations, schools, politicians and business leaders who often actively seek the insights and assistance of AERA members with those members who will be at the annual meeting. For example, the conference leaders could assemble a set of practitioners who'd like to have a 2-hour session on a given topic, and then using a list of AERA volunteers who indicated their available time and areas of knowledge, match them up.  You can send the scholars out into the conference's local community to share what they know, learn from those practitioners and policymakers, and thus share the wealth.  Even better, embed a mentoring program in this, pairing a more seasoned public intellectual with a more junior one, and provide time for them to debrief afterwards on the experience.

2. Teach people to tweet in advance.  The medium was widely available but many people I met expressed frustration because they don't know how to tweet.  How about providing a short video and set of instructions, featuring the AERA "stars" that people can review in advance and begin to practice before the conference?

3. Encourage dissent and provide more space for it.  There were some frustrating moments in this conference around the Reclaim AERA protests at the president's speech and Duncan's speech.  I will never forget the cutting remarks I overheard in hallways from so-called "progressive" colleagues about the "inappropriateness" of public protest, the "disrespect" displayed, and a sense that this was led by an "extremist minority."   We are scholars and therefore by definition we disagree. Protest is a necessary and wonderful form of expression.  Major speakers should be required to respond to a panel of people who both agree and disagree with them.  Follow-up sessions after speakers like Duncan would be helpful to provide legitimate spaces for people to talk out issues.  Put up a twitter feed behind speakers so that the audience's questions-- beyond the 3-4 who get to speak-- can be voiced.  But most of all, we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that vehement and public disagreement is "inappropriate" and "disrespectful."  We ought to be speaking truth to power more often, not less.   President Tierney did the best he could this year, and it was a good start, but I'd like to see this message more clearly promoted and dissent anticipated in advance.

4. Engage the local community further.  Creating structural change is difficult and charity won't cut it. In addition to my first suggestion, I also propose that AERA provide conference registration waivers to local community leaders, enabling their full participation in our meetings. The money used for champagne toasts could easily be redirected to that purpose.


It was a very solid meeting, and I look forward to more. I hope this suggestions are useful for future organizers (but no, do not even think about looking in my direction)!

The Resource Costs of UW-Madison Diversity Programs: A Response

This morning, Emeritus Professor of Economics Lee Hansen released a WISCAPE paper about the "resource costs of minority and disadvantaged student programs at UW-Madison" and in about an hour he will host a brownbag on the topic in the Wisconsin Idea Room at the School of Education.  I am on a flight to LA and thus will miss it; therefore I offer my perspective here.

I have a wide range of experience that I can bring to bear on these issues, having analyzed the reports of UW-Madison and UW System myself for nearly a decade, chaired the Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions and Financial Aid shared governance committee for many years, and engaged in numerous analyses of the costs and benefits of higher education programs throughout the nation. I also know Lee, both personally and professionally.  As I offer these thoughts, I want to note the sincere belief that he seeks to improve the ways in which we serve minority and disadvantaged students in this country, and does not seek to exclude them from opportunities.  However, on the most effective and appropriate  mechanisms through which this should be achieved, he and I disagree sharply.

There are 5 things you should keep in mind in reading his report.

1. It is imperative that more faculty at UW-Madison and UW System get involved in analyzing the practices of our institution.  We are key shareholders, the most important and long-standing actors, the educators, and we are smart, critical, and essential.  We should support Lee's demands that we be provided with data to facilitate a closer look at how resources are used.  There is abundant evidence that they are not being used well.

2. The debate over the public and private benefits of higher education is far from resolved. Lee has staked out one side of that debate for many decades; in fact he led the charge nationally in the late 1960s, along with Milton Friedman, for a move to the private financing of higher education-- with financial aid distributed in the form of vouchers to facilitate choice.  We have Lee to thank, in part, for today's system in which students and families bear 2/3rds or more of the costs of attendance, while government picks up an ever smaller fraction.  His beliefs in this regard are reflected in the questions he raises about whom the benefits of diversity programming accrue to-- who should pay, he thinks, depends on who benefits. And, he thinks, educational benefits can and should be evaluated in this way too.  I sharply disagree-- education is a citizen's right, it is (unfortunately) America's only real effort to ensure equality of opportunity for a decent life-- and as such it should be publicly supported.  It has been a political choice to devote little time and resources toward documenting the public benefits of higher education, instead allowing the focus of labor economists like Lee to hammer on the private benefits over and over again.

3. The type of cost-benefit analysis undertaken in the paper gives the aura of science when in fact it is art.  Like all social scientists, Lee is relying on numerous assumptions about what should and shouldn't count when accounting for all of the costs. He is including ingredients in his model that obviously the accountants at UW-Madison and UW System left out-- on both side those are choices, but there is no clear right or wrong here.   Thus, it is merely political rhetoric on Lee's part to claim that UW has failed to be transparent in its accounting-- the Legislature itself failed in clearly specifying its expectations.

4. The timing of this report release and brown bag reeks of political motives as well, coming just weeks or even days before the pending Supreme Court ruling on Fisher vs Texas, in the midst of UW's diversity planning, and right after UW System was taken to task for another accounting "snafu."

5. The report repeatedly cherry picks evidence on the benefits and costs of diversity, ignoring entirely the recent paper issued by other UW-Madison economists, Bobbi Wolfe and Jason Fletcher, on the consequences of racial diversity.

All that said, I do think Lee is providing one important service: asking us to take a hard look at our activities beyond admissions.  As Doug Massey has written, affirmative action programs come in three flavors-- the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The best ones generate compositional diversity and leverage that diversity to improve the learning environment for everyone.  The bad ones do the former and not the latter. The ugly ones don't succeed at either.

We are currently in the ugly category at Madison.  We bring students to campus and throw resources at them but fail to give leaders in this area sufficient stature and power to effect real change.  We have segregated classrooms and living spaces, and we tokenize our racial-ethnics.

Since this report is now in the public eye, I make the following recommendations:

1. UW-Madison and UW System should take seriously the contention that faculty, staff, and students deserve greater access and involvement in how resources are spent. I think that a cabinet of social scientists advisors should supplement the UC, and that incoming Chancellor Blank should convene this group. This group should have methodological, disciplinary, and substantive heterogeneity and expertise.

2.  A discussion of costs and benefits should be undertaken for all sorts of programs on campus, including Athletics, Greek Life, faculty professional development etc.  Minority programming is not our only expense, nor our most expensive.

3. This report should not be merely ignored or dismissed as nonsense by Administration.  Use the opportunity to have a conversation about diversity and how we can do better in utilizing it to enhance our educational experiences.  Also leverage this chance to have a discussion about public and private goods.  A report I will make to the Faculty Senate on Monday about the characteristics of incoming students, developed by CURAFA, should help move that conversation forward.


I wish you all well at today's brownbag, and look forward to hearing about the discussion.