An Open Letter to Wisconsin Republican Legislators

Dear Legislators

I am writing to appeal to you to get the Republican leadership in Wisconsin to cooperate with Governor Evers on finding a way to end COVID-19—even if that means ordering Wisconsin residents to wear masks in all public settings and temporarily shutting down businesses, churches, and other organizations again.

It is clear from the public health data that Wisconsin is on the cusp of tipping over into an outbreak of COVID that resembles the situations in Florida, Arizona, and Texas, which have become dire in the past week. Cases of COVID are steadily increasing, and they have been since Wisconsin reopened after the state supreme court decision setting aside the governor’s Safer at Home order. If this continues unchecked, we will soon arrive at the point where our hospitals are overwhelmed and cannot provide adequate treatment either to COVID patients or to people with other health emergencies.

My family and I have spent the past four months locked down at home, going out only for food and medicine, public service, and a tiny bit of outdoor recreation. We wear masks everywhere, even walking around our low-density neighborhood. Although my gym has reopened, I have not gone back to it. We are trying to model responsible behavior for our children as well as to protect our neighbors in case we are infected unawares. Even though the Safer at Home order was no longer in effect, it was evident that the key to beating the virus is to drastically reduce the number of potential transmissions.

But my family simply cannot do this alone. My children want to go back to school in the fall. They will not be able to do so unless the pandemic is under control. It was the right decision for schools to shut down in March with only a few cases circulating in Wisconsin, and it would be the height of recklessness to reopen them in September if the caseload is still growing—teachers and students will die and suffer lifelong effects of illness if schools are reopened too early. It is clear from worldwide evidence that the only situation that will allow safe reopening of schools is the virus is no longer in wide circulation in our communities. The only way to get that result six weeks from now is to get Wisconsin residents to stay home now and wear masks when they go out. And given the state of politics in Wisconsin, only the Republican leadership can make these things happen.

Please do the right thing for the people of Wisconsin, step up to promote sensible and mandatory public health measures, and turn the spread of COVID around.

Sincerely

Amanda Seligman

letter to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

I commend your editorial team for advocating the repeal of Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment prohibition on the recognition of gay marriage. I would like to point out, however, that gay marriages exist whether or not the state acknowledges them. The marriages of gay and lesbian couples across the Wisconsin and the US are sanctified by virtue of their mutual commitment and the ceremonies in which their religious institutions, families, and friends bless their unions. It is time for the state of Wisconsin to step up and provide legal protections to gay and lesbian married couples on the same basis they are provided to heterosexuals.

Open Records, Privacy, and the Public University

Friday was a mandatory furlough day at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I am a professor, so I stayed home to work on my taxes. Between jousting with my 1040 booklet and the accumulated laundry, I had the chance to watch updates about the open records request for Madison professor William Cronon’s email spiral out in the blogosphere in real time.

What did William Cronon do to merit an open records request? On March 15, he posted a long entry on his “Scholar as Citizen” blog giving context to the budget debate in Wisconsin. Two days later, Stephan Thompson of the Republican Party of Wisconsin filed an open records request with UW-Madison, requesting any emails that might be connected to current state politics.

What does Thompson hope to accomplish by requesting Cronon’s emails? Probably his first goal is to discover whether Cronon used his @wisc.edu address for “political activities,” an abuse of state resources. “Political activities” according to guidance we at UWM have received, include advocating for the election or recall of public officials. Cronon’s blog post clearly does not cross that line.

What results fall out from this request? Cronon himself might be embarrassed, and his time diverted from scholarship to self-defense. I am not worried about Cronon, who is a sophisticated and principled scholar. He uses a personal email account for non-academic purposes. I am more concerned about the effects of this request on other UW faculty, who now operate in a climate where we might be subject to partisan investigation if we do our jobs: creating and disseminating ideas.

Academics might like to image ourselves as fearless investigators, but we too are sensitive to the political climate in which we teach and write. Remember the uproar over Marquette University’s rescinded deanship offer last year? That resulted in the cancellation of at least one research project whose lead scholar believed was not tenable in a gay-unfriendly environment. The UW editor of a listserv crucial to my research wrote yesterday that he feared his list “may be taken off the air at any time.” What if in a lecture on Wisconsin history I connect the dots between Senator Joseph McCarthy and the effort to intimidate Wisconsin’s professors through the request to Cronon? Will my email records be next? Will I be brave enough to tell the truth despite the implicit threat?

Scholars write to publish, but much of our writing is and should remain private in order to best serve purposes of the university. We answer students’ queries about their academic progress. We correspond with our professional organizations about their actions. We write reviews of scholarly manuscripts for publishers. We evaluate other scholars’ promotion and tenure portfolios. We circulate drafts of our own work to trusted colleagues, drafts where we try to work out half-formed ideas that we know are not ready for the light of day. If any of these materials can subjected to public scrutiny at will, then it follows that we might hold back from the full internal discussion needed to produce excellent scholarship and teaching.

No one is arguing that this open records request is illegal. The request, however, threatens to undermine the processes that have produced a world-class university in Wisconsin. The UW System employs scholars to generate new knowledge about how the world works, using their academic training and the full force of their intellects to that end. This open records request certainly teaches us something important about how the world works. But it may end up deterring us from achieving the public good that public universities are charged with pursuing.

[Composed Saturday March 26; UW-Madison has since released a very limited selection of Cronon's emails to the requester.]

Inside the Rotunda

You won’t see pictures of the Family Space inside the Rotunda of the Wisconsin statehouse, where signs and greeters ask photographers to respect children’s privacy.            

For much of the afternoon that my family joined the occupation of the People’s House last Saturday, my husband and I took turns taking our younger daughter to the bathroom, begging her to overcome her fear of flushing. When I had a few moments to look around, I was dazzled. Not by chaos, but by community. Away from the slogans of the marchers outside and the microphones, drums, and musicians on the ground floor, a few good folks created a space where parents can bring their children to participate in the struggle for Wisconsin’s future.

            Beyond the makeshift “Family Space” signs was an improvised children’s play area, complete with toys, paper and markers, books, snacks, drinks, and, most astonishingly, a chair for nursing mothers. We arrived in time for the 4 p.m. story hour. My older daughter threw herself into coloring, while my younger daughter sampled crackers and an apple. I was treated as though I had as much right to make decisions about the space as those already there. Should we, my fellow parents asked me, request people to take their shoes off when they arrived? When I came back, would I bring a lesson about the history of the labor movement?

While my husband took a turn with our daughter’s recalcitrant bladder, I chatted with the woman who seemed most at home. When I asked her who had donated the snacks, she said simply that she had brought them; she accepted money from me only reluctantly, though graciously. She told me, “we are teachers, librarians, professors,” as if that explained everything.

The spirit of the beloved community swept me up. I intuited that the women waiting in a never-ending line for the restroom would let the potty emergency jump the queue. When I saw a spill, I found the paper towel stash and cleaned it up. When my daughter returned, underwear and pants soaked, I found a diaper for her in the community supply. A delivery person from Ian’s now world-famous pizza sated my children’s hunger. On our way out, I was proud to tell another mother feeding her children in a dark, cold corner that she would find welcome upstairs.

            When I first reflected on my time in the Rotunda, I thought there was probably a metaphor in my daughter’s reluctance to use the bathroom, something about the mess we make when we reject public facilities. But the most important metaphor is the character of the occupation itself. Amidst the protest signs plastered on the wall were posters from the public creating community there. The “Medic Staff” reminded us to please wash our hands and watch our steps on the hard marble stairs. I learned where I could get an ID bracelet for my children, in case they got lost. A “free store” offered a host of useful supplies. A timetable listed the upcoming workshops in civil disobedience.

The people in the Family Space and in the Rotunda embodied our basic values of democracy and decency. All comers are equal participants, no matter when we arrive. We should gladly share with our neighbors. Together, we can educate, clothe, feed, and shelter our children. When we combine our money and our talents for collective enterprises, in the name of what we value, we are more than we can be alone. I do not know their names or if that space can be recreated under the new restrictions placed on those entering the capitol. But I do know that the women and men and children in the Rotunda demonstrated what the public good can be—precisely the point under debate in the “budget repair bill” and now the proposed state budget.

[note: I wrote this in February, 2011]