Education for Democracy

Renewing the Wisconsin Idea

Chad Alan Goldberg

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780299328900
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299328931
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

American public universities were founded in a civic tradition that differentiated them from their European predecessors—steering away from the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Like many such higher education institutions across the United States, the University of Wisconsin's mission, known as the Wisconsin Idea, emphasizes a responsibility to serve the needs of the state and its people. This commitment, which necessarily requires a pledge to academic freedom, has recently been openly threatened by state and federal actors seeking to dismantle a democratic and expansive conception of public service.

Using the Wisconsin Idea as a lens, Education for Democracy argues that public higher education institutions remain a bastion of collaborative problem solving. Examinations of partnerships between the state university and people of the state highlight many crucial and lasting contributions to issues of broad public concern such as conservation, LGBTQ+ rights, and poverty alleviation. The contributors restore the value of state universities and humanities education as a public good, contending that they deserve renewed and robust support.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface | Patrick J. Brenzel
• Introduction: The University’s Service to Democracy | Chad Alan Goldberg
• John Bascom and the Wisconsin Idea: Legacy and Prospects | J. David Hoeveler
• Accuracy Always: Willard Bleyer and the Push for Better Journalism | Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen
• “No Mute, Inglorious Milton”: The Arts and the Wisconsin Idea | Maryo Gard Ewell
• The Crucible of Conservation: Land, Science, Community, and the Wisconsin Idea | Curt Meine
• Wisconsin Academics Outing LGBT Policies | R. Richard Wagner
• Then and Now: Taking the Wisconsin Idea to the State Capitol | Karen Bogenschneider
• The Power to Change Lives: The UW Odyssey Project | Emily Auerbach
• Preserving the “Public Household”: The Wisconsin Idea and the 2011 Protests | Jane L. Collins
• Laboratory of Oligarchy | Lewis A. Friedland
• The Turn Away from Government and the Need to Revive the Civic Purpose of Higher Education | Katherine J. Cramer
• Afterword | Gwen Drury
• Contributors
• Index