Regents Point to What’s Amiss With Democrats

Saturday morning’s vote by the majority of the UW Board of Regents to reject a grand compromise worked out by their own system president says everything we need to know about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party right now.

The Regents met again in closed session yesterday and another meeting is scheduled for today during which they might reverse themselves. That would be good, but their initial rejection spoke volumes about what moves and motivates Democratic elites today.

Here’s what it comes down to. The Gov. Tony Evers-appointed Regents cheated UW janitors out of their raises because they were terrified of being called out by campus activists for changing the titles on a relative handful of diversity, equity and inclusion positions. It was a victory of symbolic and ineffective identity politics over substance that would have actually helped UW staff and students. It was reminiscent of spending $50,000 to move a racist rock or taking Frederic March’s name off a theater because he once belonged to an unfortunately named student group before he spent a career as an early champion of civil rights.

The grand compromise that Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman negotiated with Speaker Robin Vos was a great deal for the UW. Vos has been withholding inflationary pay increases for UW employees, approval of a much needed new engineering building on the Madison campus, and $32 million in funding that Vos said was going to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

In the deal, announced Friday, Rothman got the new engineering building plus money for additional building projects, he got the $32 million restored, and he got the wage increases released, all while not having to eliminate a single DEI position. As a sweetener, the UW also would have been able to keep some revenue that comes from the reciprocity program with Minnesota that had gone to the general fund. All told, the UW would have gotten $800 million. 

What Vos got was mostly window dressing. Some of the DEI positions would have been reclassified as “student success” positions, whatever that means. There would have been a three-year moratorium on creating new administrative positions, not just in DEI but everywhere. The only problem with that idea was that it was only three years and it didn’t call for the outright elimination of some of that bureaucratic overhead. One of the big drivers of the high cost of higher education, after all, is the proliferation of non-teaching positions. 

There would have also been a new endowed professorship in “conservative thought.” It’s not clear what department the position would have been in or what it would have done exactly. Teach? Research? Be an advocate for conservative views in multiple departments? Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin may have thought it was a great idea as student marches and sit-ins could have been redirected there. In any event, it was symbolic and didn’t amount to much of anything. It would have been a small pill to swallow, especially when washed down with that $800 million. 

But that all went up in smoke when the Board of Regents, in a stunningly foolish move on Saturday morning, rejected the deal. In doing so, they threw both Rothman and Mnookin, who was vocal in her support of the compromise, under the bus. They gave all that up, apparently, because they objected to seeing a relative handful of DEI positions renamed to something else. 

This is madness because there is no evidence that I can see that current DEI programs are accomplishing much of anything. The percentage of Black students on the Madison campus has barely budged, racist incidents still happen too often, and campus climate surveys continue to show that the environment isn’t as welcoming as it should be. And this after years of these DEI efforts. The standard line will be that they’ve been underfunded. It’s more likely that the definition of insanity is to double down on the same thing and expect different results. 

Look, neither cutting these positions willy nilly nor defending them to the hilt is justified. What would have made sense is a deep dive into DEI, preferably conducted by the respected, nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau. It doesn’t appear that anyone — defenders or detractors — has a very good handle on how DEI is practiced on different campuses. This could be anything from helping disabled students navigate campus to preaching the illiberal ideology of Ibram X. Kendi. We know the end results don’t show much progress, but why is that? Can DEI be improved or should the whole thing be scrapped in favor of some other effort? I don’t doubt the problems are real but I’m plenty skeptical that the solutions are in DEI as now practiced. 

In any event, DEI hardly has a record that deserves falling on your sword over, and yet that’s exactly what the Regents, egged on by legislative Democrats and activists did. 

Aside from the good stuff for the UW, there was the big picture. What was really encouraging during those brief hours when the compromise was alive was the deal itself. It showed that Rothman and the UW could, in fact, recognize political reality and work with Republicans in the best interests of public higher education. Because, like it or not, Republicans aren’t going anywhere. Even after the new liberal Supreme Court imposes new maps, the GOP is likely to have a comfortable margin in the Assembly and at least a slim majority in the Senate. 

But instead of choosing the real world, the Regents, Evers and the Democrats chose amorphous and inconsequential DEI ideology over real, tangible progress for students, including students of color. How does any student benefit from inadequate facilities, demoralized staff and budget cuts? 

This may be reversed, perhaps as early as later today. Vos probably won’t walk away because the business community is on his back over the engineering building and staff at Whitewater, in his district, want their raises. Regents are, no doubt, taking heat from staff who want their raises and that same business community.

But the initial vote, and the criticism of a good compromise from Democratic legislators and liberal interest groups, reminded voters of everything they don’t like about the Democratic Party.

A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.

School board needs challengers. Incumbent Madison School Board members Savion Castro and Maia Pearson have announced that they’re running for reelection in April. I have deep concerns about the direction of this Board. So, I hope candidates will step forward to challenge them with a fresh and practical vision. You need only 100 signatures to get on the ballot and nomination papers can be circulated now through January 3rd.