Events at the beginning of the summer at two UWs should stimulate UW faculty political activity.
Let me start of the right. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker issued a line-item veto to strike an unconstitutional ban on faculty speech and research from the Wisconsin state budget. The vetoed measure would have kicked the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism off the UW-Madison campus.
Here in Washington State, the legislature finally released a a budget that supports some of the UW’s needs. This led the Seattle Times to praise the renegade democrat, Senator Rodney Tom, who made himself leader of the Senate by joining in coalition with the Senate Republicans.
Media responses to Walker in Wisconsin and Rodney Tom here in Washington State both emphasize right wing support for higher education. In Wisconsin, the right wing Walker is being seen as a rational republican for his support of free speech and limits on the number of public school vouchers. In our state, the media, with the expected exception of David Goldstein at the Stranger, are applauding Rodney Tom, the conservative Democrat, a rational democrat for his support for a state budget that helped our UW.
Our President, Michael Young has echoed this media support. I suspect most of us would agree with the UW President. At the same time, as pointed out by Goldstein, our state budget … like the one approved by Walker, has very disturbing implications for the long term support not only for higher education but for the state enterprise as a whole.
This may be a pre vision of the 2016 Presidential and Gubernatorial campaigns. The role of the UW faculty in 2016 may be critical in this period. With families and other UW professionals, we number abut 20,000 … possibly the largest single block of middle class liberal leaning votes in Washington State. That group needs to be heard.
As one of the few politically visible UW faculty, I wonder what we .. that is the faculty community .. are thinking? I would like to suggest that there is a great deal of misunderstanding of faculty political rights:
a. We DO have obligations to engage in free speech. The limits on support for specific ballot issues or candidates do not conflict with the charge to the UW to be a place for free discussion of politics.
b. Faculty have rights to organize political action committees … as long as these groups do not use UW resources. PACs are also free to identify with the UW as long as they make it clear that the PAC does not claim to represent the UW. My own website, THE-Ave.US. does this by its slogan describing THE-Ave.US that being about the UW but not of the UW.
—
From my desktop
Steve Schwartz