Power grab at the UW

Seems to me that the clowns who wore a Barack Obama costume with a noose attached to it to a Badgers game this fall could use a course that explores the issue of racism. But GOP legislators, with Rep. Dave Murphy of Greenville leading the charge, think that a University of Wisconsin-Madison course dealing with racism and titled “The Problem of Whiteness” should be canceled and the professor teaching it fired.

I didn’t see a whole lot of them object to the racist costume but now those legislators are up in arms over an elective course that seeks to understand “how race is experienced by white people” and “how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy,” according to the course description.

As the university explained in a statement, “The new course will benefit students who are interested in developing a deeper understanding of race issues. The course is a challenge and response to racism of all kinds.”

I teach a basic journalism course at Marquette and, once upon a time, I studied the history of American race relations in a graduate program at UW-Milwaukee. That doesn’t make me an expert on anything, but that experience of dealing with students and academics does provoke some thoughts.

I think the course title was selected as a provocative marketing tool to attract students (the course could have been simply titled “Racism today”). I think that was a mistake, and I’m not going to defend a professor who posted thoughtless and morally objectionable tweets after five Dallas police officers were killed by a sniper on July 7. Nor would I defend a course that teaches conspiracy theories or that all whites are inherently racist, if that’s what this course does.

But the question of racism and its effects globally and throughout history is a legitimate field of study. This is especially true in a country with a history that includes slavery, lynchings, Selma, Birmingham, race riots, police shootings of blacks, blacks shooting police officers and the recent conviction of Dylan Roof for murdering nine black parishioners in a church in South Carolina.

We should study that in our great universities, and students should be exposed to that history. (And I think the great W.E.B. DuBois should be required reading, as he is in this course, for every student sometime during his or her college career.) And I think whether this course meets the requirements of legitimate study or whether this professor should be fired should be left in the hands of the university, not excitable legislators pandering to voters.

But I also think this really isn’t about this one course or one professor. My guess is there are other courses to which Murphy will object (and his staff is scouring UW’s course offerings for more). And despite his protestations that he really doesn’t want to micromanage UW, that’s exactly what he’s doing. I think this is about power over UW and justification to reduce its budget. Murphy says he has supported more funding for UW but he has a funny way of showing it if he’s willing to cut funding over one course.

Legislators and Gov. Scott Walker have cut funding and undermined UW over the past several years (although Walker recently said he wants to improve funding in the next budget for all education). The result has been a diminishing of the university as a research institution. As one state GOP party leader put it to me in an email this week: “The UW is an economic powerhouse. Cutting its budget only works to diminish its value.”

He’s right. And diminishing the university is what Murphy and his colleagues are doing, whether or not that’s their intent.

Ernst-Ulrich Franzen is the Journal Sentinel’s associate editorial page editor. Email: efranzen@jrn.com ; Twitter: @efranzen1