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City, Culture, Daily Bread, Demographics, Economy

Daily Bread for 6.1.22: The End of DYKWIA in Whitewater

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM for 15h 08m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1980,  Cable News Network (CNN) launches.

Every town, big or small, has some tiny number who will, when in disagreement, ask ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ The right reply — in the full meaning of right — should be ‘Well, yes, you are no more or less than any other.’ For those who ask the arrogant question, the right answer will be unexpected and unsatisfying. Someone could drain a bottle of Chivas and not be half so drunk as a man drunk on pride.

It’s not, however, the predictable presence of a few self-important people that defines a culture. It’s the presence of more than a few, holding sway over others, that defines a culture. In Whitewater, the status culture that led to the question ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ has passed. There may be some in Whitewater who still ask the question, but they’ve no significant social group behind them. They perhaps imagine that they do, but then people imagine many things, and kid themselves about many things.

Here’s why, the question DYKWIA?, a question that emerges in status-based cultures, is now longer significant in Whitewater:

1. The Great Recession. Economic declines needn’t alter a culture, but unaddressed declines will. So it has been in Whitewater: the Great Recession, lasting from 2007-2009, brought change from which Whitewater’s status-based culture could not recover. The Great Recession was a plague that brought other plagues. From that recession came stagnation, addiction, and an erosion of social bonds. Old Whitewater did not understand the significance of the Great Recession on the community, and so carried on with boosterism during and after that economic downturn. This was a fundamental — a decisive — mistake.

Whitewater went from a sunburn to melanoma, but Old Whitewater went on applying cocoa butter.

2. Consequently… From that inability to shift course, local, state, and national stresses moved different groups within the city in different directions. Some moved left, some right, some others into debilitating malaise. The center-left became more active after Act 10, and the right moved from Walker to Trump so completely that Walker soon became an afterthought.

By the mid-Teens, during Trump’s rise, Whitewater’s existing demographic splits (students and non-students, Latinos and Anglos, working class and middle class) became yet more fractured by ideology and socio-economics).

3. Under Division, ‘DYKWIA?’ Means Much Less. Two years ago, when I wrote about a local politician’s misplaced notion that a particular family name was the most important in Whitewater, I wrote about it as an ethically mistaken way of seeing Whitewater through the names of a few families.

I always intended, but never completed, a second part to that post, about the factually mistaken nature of the claim. By the time (in 2017) that the councilman rebuked a student reporter for ignorance of “undoubtedly the best known surname in Whitewater” it should have been evident to him that Whitewater no longer had a single best-known surname. The city had become too diverse, with different groups too particularly occupied, to care about a given family name.

Perhaps the councilman cared, and perhaps he truly believed, but his horizon captured only a part of the city’s fourteen thousand residents. He wanted to rebuke a student reporter for not recognizing a family name, but it should have been obvious that most students on campus, and most residents beyond, cared more about the use of buildings than the names on the side.

When that politician (now out of office) ventured an opinion about the Whitewater’s society, he thought that he was writing about the society in the present; he was instead writing about an irrecuperable past that had already faded by 2017. Stand too close, and one cannot see the forest for the trees…

There’s a sad irony in the decline of ‘DYKWIA?’ This libertarian blogger, and many others in Whitewater, wanted Old Whitewater’s small-minded status culture to end through a universal recognition of the equal value of each person. Instead, that status culture ended for another reason: the city became too fragmented for the question ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ to resonate widely.

Previously: Old Whitewater’s 3 Big Mistakes.

Egypt unveils massive haul of newly discovered ancient artefacts in Saqqara:

Egyptian archaeologists have unveiled a cache of 150 bronze statues depicting various gods and goddesses including “Bastet, Anubis, Osiris, Amunmeen, Isis, Nefertum and Hathor,” along with 250 sarcophagi at the Saqqara archaeological site south of Cairo.

City, Culture, Daily Bread, Politics

Daily Bread for 5.31.22: Old Whitewater’s 3 Big Mistakes

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:26 PM for 15h 07m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 455, Emperor Petronius Maximus is stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.

‘Old Whitewater’ — a state of mind rather than a person — dominated this city’s culture until recently. Mostly composed of traditional conservatives, it had a few others among its ilk, all of them united in civic views and habits that sustained them up until, within a single decade after the Great Recession, those views gave way to conservative populism.

‘Old Whitewater’ isn’t, by the way, a description of all residents, or even long-term residents. The perspective applies only to a portion thereof, an unfortunate minority within the city (namely, local officials and would-be notables).

Old Whitewater committed three key mistakes, making its eclipse inevitable:

1. Boosterism as an ideology. Boosterism, as a political & development doctrine, is the specious claim that if one accentuates the positives within a community, one will garner more positives still. It’s a perspective that ignores some residents’ suffering for the sake of imagined economic gains. It encourages indifference to the least advantaged, lest those who are disadvantaged detract from the happy tale of progress that boosters repeat ceaselessly. In its heyday, the true believers of boosterism, whether otherwise religious or secular, were among the most orthodox of believers in this community.

Boosterism is an ideology for the narrow of mind and small of heart. It’s also a lie. Over the years that happy-talk boosters dominated Whitewater, the city only grew poorer. This plain fact led to the admission that, despite years of insistence that a boom was only around the corner, Whitewater remained a low-income community.

Flat-Earthers would have been as credible.

Flatearth.jpg CC BY-SA 4.0

2. Thinking that a Perimeter Fence Would Protect Them. The construction of a (metaphorical) perimeter fence is how a group tries to shield itself from competing ideas. By the late Aughts, digital media were so pervasive that a few residents could not prevent others from sharing competing ideas and critiques about local politics. Local newspapers were fawning, but they could be circumvented, just as a figurative perimeter fence could be breached.

Email, texting, the web, blogging, and social media, all over the place… passing fads, right?

‘No one will ever read that‘ sits alongside ‘horses are good enough‘ and ‘talking movies will never catch on’ in the Museum of Bad Takes.

3. Believing They Didn’t Have to Prove Nothin’, Damnit. Limits imposed through a cultural perimeter fence were meant to obviate the need for Old Whitewater to justify its claims. Why prove your assertions when you can cajole others into consensus, and limit discussion, with no rationale at all?

America is the most dynamic and productive society in human history, but Old Whitewater thought that it didn’t have to meet any standard beyond the repetition of platitudes and slogans. In fact, an effective perimeter fence requires work to maintain, and a vigorous defense once it falls. Instead, breaches were left unsealed, panels and posts unreplaced. When gaps began to emerge, the ideas that leaked in were rebutted poorly or not at all. (This was a secondary but crucial problem: flimsy claims are often worse than no claims at all. Effective claims require careful preparation; the complacent don’t prepare.)

Those who held the view that they didn’t have to justify their claims first looked ridiculous, then comically tragic.

Tomorrow: The End of DYKWIA in Whitewater.

Summiting the Tallest Mountain on Earth:

GoPro Awards Recipient + mountaineering guide Jon Gupta takes his GoPros from Mount Everest Base Camp up to 29,032 ft (8848m). Congrats on hiking the world’s tallest peak + thanks for showing us the view from the top.

America, City, Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.30.22: Yes, Traditional Conservatives Are Finished as a Political Force

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Good morning.

Memorial Day in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 87. Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:25 PM for 15h 06m 04s of daytime.  The moon is new with none of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the first Indianapolis 500 ends with Ray Harroun in his Marmon Wasp becoming the first winner of the 500-mile auto race.

The359 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

In Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and across America, traditional conservatism is dead as a political force. Of the three types of conservatives in Whitewater (traditional, transactional, and populist) only two remain as a political force: the transactionalists and the populists. See Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater. Traditional conservatives dominated Old Whitewater, along with those needy enough to sit at their table:

This group wanes a bit more each year. They’re no longer the leading conservative force in Whitewater.

The most zealous of the boosters, however, were not locals at all, but new officials who became converts to the traditionalists’ boosterism so that they might have a place at the table. (Sometimes they weren’t even conservatives, but it was a conservative table setting.)

‘Wanes a bit more’ was a sympathetic understatement. It would have been more candid to write that traditional conservatism in Whitewater and everywhere else is, well, f-cking finished as a political force. If the traditional conservatives could sell all their political capital on eBay, they wouldn’t find any buyers to meet their reserve price (however low).

In the Washington Post, Paul Waldman asks Trumpism is leaving old-line conservatives behind. Can they catch up?:

Throughout the last seven years — since Donald Trump first grabbed hold of the GOP — the old Republican establishment has felt besieged and disoriented, struggling to accommodate itself to the new reality of the right. How do they avoid being cast off by a new and aggressive generation of leaders? Can they retain their influence and guide the party’s future, or will they become irrelevant? How can they stay on the conservative parade float?

You can see them trying in an interesting new proclamation, titled “America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt,” published Thursday in the National Review and signed by a few dozen old-school conservative luminaries, in which they enlist for the battle of the moment. In the process, they show just where the conservative center of gravity is today; it might have been titled, “Hey, can we get in on this exciting new culture war, too?”

….

Nevertheless, “America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt” is reminiscent of a document signed in 2010 by a similar group of Republican greybeards. Titled “The Mount Vernon Statement,” unveiled near George Washington’s estate, and featuring old-timey parchment and flowing script, it created a way for those Reagan-era conservatives to jump on the tea party bandwagon, a kind of Founding Father cosplay that was terribly in vogue at the time.

But it turned out that the tea party was all style; it was just trickle-down economics and racial panic in a tricorn hat. The new authoritarianism is those things, too, but it may turn out to be something more frightening. One thing, though, is clear: With the exception of a tiny number of dissenters, everyone in the Republican Party wants to get in on the act.

Trumpism, MAGA, conservative populism, etc. — it’s authoritarian nativism by whatever name, and it’s the dominant force on the right. The traditional conservative are finished, in Whitewater and everywhere else. There are, effectually, only conservative populists and a few double-talking transactionalists scheming to manipulate the populists as they did the traditionalists.

Politics — ‘the activities or affairs engaged in by a government, politician, or political party’ — concerns both principle and practicality. Practicality, however, weighs heavily. Traditional conservatives aren’t as rare as flat-earthers, but they’re about as inconsequential; a few people believing as such make no difference in community affairs.

What a warning this should be, a humbling reminder to all: traditional conservatives were once everywhere, and now they’re few and feeble. Like American bison, they were once widespread, yet in a few years’ time, millions gone.

Photo by Bryce olsen on Unsplash.

Puma Found in Elementary School Bathroom:

Not your average school day: A puma was found in the bathroom of a Brazilian elementary school on May 21. According to local media, a 9-year-old boy was the first to discover the wildcat after playing soccer on the school grounds. Thankfully, animal officials were able to safely relocate the puma to a nearby jungle without any injuries to humans or the cat.

Music

Memorial Day Music: Eternal Father, Strong to Save

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“The song known to United States Navy men and women as the “Navy Hymn,” is a musical benediction that long has had a special appeal to seafaring men, particularly in the American Navy and the royal navies of the British Commonwealth and which, in more recent years, has become a part of French naval tradition.

The original words were written as a hymn by a schoolmaster and clergyman of the Church of England, the Reverend William Whiting. Reverend Whiting (1825 — 1878) resided on the English coast near the sea and had once survived a furious storm in the Mediterranean. His experiences inspired him to pen the ode, Eternal Father, Strong to Save.

In the following year, 1861, the words were adapted to music by another English clergyman, the Reverend John B. Dykes (1823 — 1876), who had originally written the music as Melita (ancient name for the Mediterranean island of Malta)” via Naval History and Heritage Command.

Big Lie, Crackpots, Daily Bread, Elections, Gableman

Daily Bread for 5.29.22: Gableman Gets Trolled. How Could It Be Otherwise?

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:24 PM for 15h 04m 43s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1848, Wisconsin enters the Union: “Wisconsin became the 30th state to enter the Union with an area of 56,154 square miles, comprising 1/56 of the United States at the time. Its nickname, the “Badger State,” was not in reference to the fierce animal but to miners who spent their winters in the state, living in dugouts and burrowing much like a badger.”

YouTube | Office of the Special Counsel

Patrick Marley reports Michael Gableman asked for tips to help him find voter fraud. The public responded by trolling him:

MADISON – When Wisconsin Republicans asked the public to report concerns about the 2020 election, voters flocked to the web to submit tips — often about the very officials conducting the probe.

“There is a very disturbed man ranting like a lunatic and telling provable lies about the election in order to undermine election integrity,” one person wrote in April. “Not only that, he’s stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from taxpayers by pretending to do a legitimate investigation. This is fraud at the highest levels and he literally advocated nullifying the votes of Wisconsin. Please stop this flagrant fraud asap.”

The submission was similar to dozens of others filed over the last year that taunt Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman for budgeting $676,000 for a review of a presidential election that recounts, court decisions and independent studies have concluded was properly called for Joe Biden.

Well done, Wisconsin, so very well done.

The first wave of urban robots is here:

The robot takeover is here — and it’s kinda cute.

Daily Bread, Russia

Daily Bread for 5.28.22: The Rise and Fall Of Russian Oligarchs

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:23 PM for 15h 03m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 3.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1588, the Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port.)

The Russian oligarchs didn’t have much trouble buying up yachts, jets, and mansions — that is, if they didn’t end up in prison, exiled, or mysteriously dead. But the war in Ukraine has turned the world against members of this opulent uber-class. Where did all the money come from, and is there still a chance of them holding on to it?

T-Rex Exhibit Pops Up in UK Ahead of ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Premiere:

A giant virtual dinosaur appeared outside London’s Trafalgar Square on Wednesday, days ahead of the UK premiere of ‘Jurassic World Dominion.’ Folks in the area wanting to see the installation have until May 29 to check it out.

Crime, Daily Bread, Law, Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.27.22: Ron Johnson Scrambles for an Unlocked Door

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 68. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:23 PM for 15h 01m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 8.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1905,  during the Russo-Japanese War, sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin.

This libertarian blogger is from a movement family (that is, an old libertarian family), and I’d not oppose background checks (or restrictions on high-performance firearms). Regardless, Republican Ron Johnson chose to run, and holds office willingly. He should be prepared during the day to answer policy questions of the day.

It was, after all, a heavily-armed killer’s search for an unlocked door that presents again the policy questions that Johnson seeks to escape.

Boeing Starliner landing:

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule successfully landed at the White Sands Space Harbor, U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, on 25 May 2022, at 22:49 UTC (18:49 EDT). For Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2), the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner uncrewed spacecraft returned with more than 600 pounds of cargo from the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA/Boeing OFT-2 Starliner landing

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, May 31st, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Somewhere in Time

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Tuesday, May 31st at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Somewhere in Time @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Romance/ Fantasy

Rated PG 1 hour, 43 minutes (1980)

This classic romance is a much requested film! A modern day Chicago playwright (Christopher Reeve) travels back in time to meet the actress (Jane Seymour) whose vintage portrait hangs in the Grand Hotel. Filmed on location at the Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, MI. It also stars Christopher Plummer, Teresa Wright, and William Macy. Memorable musical score by John Barry.

One can find more information about Somewhere in Time at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Cats, Games/Puzzles

Friday Catblogging: The Release Date for Stray?

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Oisin Kuhnke writes Upcoming Cat Simulator ‘Stray’ Release Date Possibly Leaked:

If a leak is to be believed, the cyberpunk adventure cat game Stray might be releasing this coming July.

According to the Twitter account PlayStation Game Size, the PlayStation Database currently has Stray releasing on July 19. This would certainly line up with what we heard earlier in the month, as Stray currently has a summer release window. 

But as PlayStation Game Size notes, it’s entirely possible that this is just a place-holder for now.

Fingers crossed that, after a long wait, Stray is about to hit the market.

In the meantime, there’s a game-play walkthrough:

Big Lie, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 5.26.22: Better Late Than Never for Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Dean Knudson 

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers and a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM for 15h 00m 19s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 14.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1805,  Napoleon assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan Cathedral, the gothic cathedral in Milan.

Jack Kelly reports Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Dean Knudson to resign:

Dean Knudson, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, will resign after serving almost five years on the commission, he announced Wednesday.

Speaking at a meeting scheduled to elect the commission’s next chair, Knudson said he would continue to serve until Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, appoints his successor.

During his remarks, Knudson said, “I will put my conservative record against anyone in the state of Wisconsin, and yet, now I’ve been branded a RINO (Republican in name only).”

Knudson said he’s received that brand because “two of my core values are to practice service above self and to display personal integrity.”

He continued: “And to me, that integrity demands acknowledging the truth even when the truth is painful. In this case, the painful truth is that President (Donald) Trump lost the election in 2020. Lost the election in Wisconsin in 2020. And the loss was not due to election fraud.”

Knudson also took an indirect jab at fellow GOP commissioner Robert Spindell, who is vying to be WEC’s next chair. Spindell was one of 10 Republicans in the state who posed as a false elector for former President Donald Trump.

“Unfortunately now, elected officials, appointed officials and candidates at the highest levels in my party have refused to believe that President Trump lost,” he said. “Even worse, some have peddled misinformation and perpetuated falsehoods about the 2020 election.”

A majority of Knudson’s fellow Wisconsinites, and a majority of his fellow Americans, did not think Trump’s loss was ‘painful’; an eight-million-vote national majority received Trump’s loss with relief and optimism for the future. There was no time suitable to brook false claims about the 2020 election.

The best one can say: better late than never for Dean Knudson.

Lost beneath the leaves, lasers reveal an ancient Amazonian civilization:

Courts, Daily Bread, Education, Law, School District

Daily Bread for 5.25.22: Wisconsin Law May Decide (Some) Policy Questions Over LGBT Discussions

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:21 PM for 14h 58m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 22% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1961, President Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade.

Many public schools across Wisconsin are considering what can and cannot be taught (or even discussed) about sexual identity. This is, of course, a topic of national discussion. In Wisconsin, a case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court may set the legally-permissible boundaries of discussion (although the debate about what should be the proper policy will surely continue despite the state’s high court ruling). Shawn Johnson reports Wisconsin Supreme Court hears arguments in lawsuit challenging Madison schools’ guidance supporting transgender students:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging the Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy for supporting transgender students.

While the case deals with big issues, it could hinge on procedural questions, namely whether the conservative group behind the challenge can bring the case with anonymous plaintiffs.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty brought the lawsuit in February 2020 challenging MMSD’s “Guidance & Policies to Support Transgender, Non-binary & Gender-Expansive Students.”

The policy, which has been in place since 2018, states that students “will be called by their affirmed name and pronouns regardless of parent/guardian permission to change their name and gender.” The policy also states that school staff “shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardians.”

WILL attorney Luke Berg told justices that this violates the constitutional rights of parents to raise their children the way they think is best, urging the court to block the entire policy.

“Let the parents decide,” Berg told justices. “For some kids, it may be right. For others, it may not. But parents know their kids best.”

But attorney Adam Prinsen, who represents the Gender Equity Association of James Madison Memorial High School, argued the district’s policy didn’t prevent parents from doing anything with their children.

“We’re talking about the school respecting a decision of a child to go by a different name or set of pronouns at school and respecting that confidentiality,” Prinsen said. “The school is not intervening in the home.”

Speculating on how the court will decide is a fool’s game. The decision the court makes, however, will likely serve for Wisconsin as legislation has in other states: as a rule for (or against) speech in public schools.

We’re not Florida, of course. We may find ourselves, however, closer to that state’s policy than we realize.

Twenty Years of Putin Playing the West in 3 Minutes:

Big Lie, Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Speaker Vos, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 5.24.22: WISGOP Finds Robin Vos Too Sane for Their Tastes

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 65. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:20 PM for 14h 57m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 31.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater Unified School Board meets at 6 PM in closed session and 7 PM in open session.

On this day in 1940,  Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

Vos wants to describe the critical reaction to his remarks as ‘free speech,’ and it is free speech, in same way that speaking about a flat earth, MKUltra, or fluoridation as a communist plot are expressions of free speech.

The Republicans held their 2022 convention at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton, but there’s a more fitting venue they might consider for their next gathering:

Arkham Asylum in Batman vol. 3, #9 (December 2016).
Art by Mikel Janín.

Pod of orcas put in splashy show for Washington beachgoers:

City, Daily Bread, Education, University, UW System

Daily Bread for 5.23.22: UW-Whitewater’s Chancellor Search Brings Opportunity

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 62. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:19 PM for 14h 55m 28s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 40.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1854,  the first railroad reaches Madison:

On this date the Milwaukee and Mississippi railroad reached Madison, connecting the city with Milwaukee. When the cars pulled into the depot, thousands of people gathered to witness the ceremonial arrival of the first train, and an enormous picnic was held on the Capitol grounds for all the passengers who’d made the seven-hour trip from Milwaukee to inaugurate the line.

Rich Kremer reports UW-Whitewater chancellor search to begin amid increased political scrutiny of higher education. Of course, there are challenges, but a search is an opportunity for UW-Whitewater and this community. Kramer begins with where the university now stands:

A search will soon begin for a new chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who can provide “stable leadership” at the campus, which has had four chancellors since 2018.

The announcement comes just days after Republican state lawmakers and candidates attacked the most recent UW chancellor pick.

A UW System press release May 18 announced the creation of a 12-member search and screen committee that will gather potential candidates to find a long-term chancellor to lead the UW-Whitewater campus. The committee, named by UW Board of Regents President Edmund Manydeeds, includes regents, students and campus instructors.

“This is a critically important search,” Manydeeds said. “The students, faculty and staff of UW-Whitewater have been resilient and dedicated, and they deserve stable leadership.”

The search committee announcement comes more than a month after former UW-Whitewater Interim Chancellor Jim Henderson abruptly resigned, citing a lack of support from UW System administration amid plans to survey students at every state university about whether they feel campuses support freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Kremer spoke with UW-Whitewater professor and faculty senate president Tracy Hawkins for the story, and Hawkins’s remarks are sound — there’s a good position at a good school waiting to be filled:

But despite the turnover in UW-Whitewater’s chancellor’s office and the GOP criticism of the latest UW chancellor pick, Tracy Hawkins, a UW-Whitewater professor and faculty senate chair, said she and others on campus are optimistic about the upcoming search.

“I hope that the candidates who are interested in this position do their research so that they know what they’re coming into,” Hawkins said. “But I think that the situation here is really ripe for a great leader who can really advocate for the students of UW-Whitewater and the citizens of Wisconsin in general as deserving of access to high quality education that includes a variety of viewpoints.”

I’ve been a critic of UW-Whitewater and UW System’s leadership, yet I am optimistic about what can be accomplished if the search committee looks carefully and informs candidates fully.

It’s a mistake to think that a leadership search is necessarily a dismal prospect for Whitewater. There are good educators to be found from across this county who would be happy to work in this small, beautiful city.

Whitewater should accept no less.

The Sun seen by the Solar Orbiter at closest approach:

From within the orbit of planet Mercury, the Solar Orbiter returned imagery during its first close encounter (perihelion) with the Sun. In close-up, the south pole of the Sun.

Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team
The Sun observed by the Solar Orbiter at perihelion