FREE WHITEWATER

Misconduct

‘A cancer on the presidency’

Attorney George Conway III writes Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him. Although I would describe Trump more broadly as a blight on the country, Conway’s assessment is spot on: So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not “totally” or “completely,” as he…

Unforgotten, Unforgiven

What any given person thinks about Trump is hardly a source of useful criticism. The proper focus of criticism is Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders and this includes Trumpism Down to the Local Level. Predictably, these Trumpists think that if they leave his employ, perhaps they might recover from the stain…

Negative Equality is No Virtue

After UW-Whitewater’s chancellor, Beverly Kopper, resigned in December, faculty member JoEllen Burkholder objected that Kopper’s resignation would amount to a double standard: Some faculty members, such as women’s and gender studies professor JoEllen Burkholder, questioned the timing of Kopper’s resignation coming before the report’s release. Burkholder said she sees Kopper’s one-sentence resignation letter submitted to…

Immoral (and Unnecessary) Compromises

There’s a certain kind of Republican who rationalizes Trump’s many vices because, well, Trump has nominated some conservative judges. (Hugh Hewitt, who’ll rationalize anything to keep a job on the Salem talk radio network comes to mind. See It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.) If there’s an equivalent of this, it’s a certain kind of Democrat…

Sanders Says He Was ‘A Little Bit Busy’

Sydney Ember and Katie Benner report Sexism Claims from Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Run: Paid Less, Treated Worse: In February 2016, Giulianna Di Lauro, a Latino outreach strategist for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential operation, complained to her supervisor that she had been harassed by a campaign surrogate whom she drove to events ahead of the Democratic primary…

Updated Post: Questions Concerning a Ban on the UW-Whitewater Chancellor’s Husband After a Sexual Harassment Investigation

I’ve added a few additional questions to a post, Questions Concerning a Ban on the UW-Whitewater Chancellor’s Husband After a Sexual Harassment Investigation, first published here on 9.17.18. These questions are surely not comprehensive, and they are process & policy-oriented, so they implicate mainly the institutional response to individual injuries.  As policy, however, the university or…

Kopper Resigns, Whitewater Remains

One reads that Beverly Kopper, UW-Whitewater chancellor, has resigned her position effective 12.31.18.  Her resignation was generally expected for at least the last few weeks, and was, more importantly, necessary.  This was a public matter involving a spouse appointed to a public position accused of sexual harassment by at least five women while the appointing chancellor kept…

Lifting Russian sanctions key to Trump deal exposed by Cohen

Rachel Maddow shows how the Trump Organization’s continued pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow deal into the 2016 campaign, exposed by Michael Cohen this week, explains Donald Trump’s soft stance on sanctioning Russian entities, including the bank that would finance the Trump Tower deal. Trump has survived dozens of political or financial acts that would…

Daily Union‘s Story on Teacher Dragging Student Through Halls: Weak and Weaker

For years the Daily Union has failed readers by misleading residents about events in their own area, and today their supposed crime reporter Ryan Whisner and his editor (Chris Spangler) blow another story, this time about a teacher in Waterloo who allegedly dragged a small child down the hall of the child’s school (there is…

The Unacculturated

One reads today in the Journal Sentinel that the Baraboo school district condemns a photo showing a large group of students giving Nazi salute: A photo posted on social media of dozens of Baraboo High School students giving a Nazi salute has drawn condemnation from the school district. Tweets say the photo shows the entire male class of…

0, 448, 476, 84

0 Number of published words from Chancellor Beverly Kopper in support of five complainants alleging sexual assault or harassment from her publicly appointed assistant-to-the-chancellor spouse. 448 Number of published words from Chancellor Beverly Kopper in reply to one remark from a single sportscaster during a single Packers preseason game. (It’s not that one shouldn’t reply…

A Defense That’s Worse Than Nothing

Retired UW-Whitewater professor Brian Kevin Beck contends that Kopper shouldn’t leave [the] Chancellor post. (Candidly, there’s a chance that his defense is so bad that it’s an intentional parody of a defense. It’s hard to believe anyone who served on a worthy faculty could reason so poorly.) Beck argues that (1) misconduct involving Kopper’s public…