Alan J. Borsuk – Page 104 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Providing Straight Information on Public Opinion in a Historic Political Time

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:January 19, 2012
Post category:Election Law Marquette Law School Political Processes & Rhetoric Public

Amid the amazing tumult on the Wisconsin political scene, with partisanship and passion running so high, how can you get straight information about what voters are thinking?

One good answer: You can run a large-scale polling project, adhering to the highest standards of professionalism and non-partisanship. You can poll repeatedly throughout the year, so that you can follow trends. You can make all the results available promptly to anybody. You can go to lengths to give others a chance to see what you’ve found out.

That is what the Marquette Law School Poll is going to do. It will be the most extensive polling project in Wisconsin history, and we are fully committed to making it an independent effort that will have no agenda except to find out as much as we can about public opinion in Wisconsin and share it with all.

In fact, consider this your invitation to tune into the poll’s results. We are launching the first round of polling on Thursday, Jan. 19, and will release the results next Wednesday, Jan. 25.

Amid Differences, a Call to Work Together to Improve Mental Health Treatment

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:January 12, 2012
Post category:Civil Rights Health Care Public Speakers at Marquette

It wasn’t part of her prepared remarks, but Prof. Lucinda Roy of Virginia Tech University may have offered an especially important point as she began her keynote address at a conference Wednesday at Eckstein Hall on mental illness commitment laws and other issues related to mental illness.

It had been an intense, and at times tense, morning before a full house of more than 200 in the Appellate Courtroom. Meg Kissinger, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, described “Imminent Danger,” the large project she authored which ran in the newspaper in recent weeks. It described how a revolution in American mental commitment laws, which began with a federal court ruling in a case involving a West Allis woman in 1972, had led to far more people with mental illnesses living outside of mental institutions. Some of them refuse treatment and a few have committed violent acts.

Kissinger and the newspaper had been strongly criticized by some members of the audience who thought the series was sensationalistic and left people with a harmful and wrong image of those with mental illnesses as dangerous. One speaker, Tom Zander, a psychologist, lawyer, and long-time prominent advocate for alternatives to mental commitment, had sharply attacked the series as based on what he regarded as false premises, including the notion that the West Allis case had led to specific horrible crimes. (Zander is an adjunct professor at Marquette University Law School.)

Throughout the morning, which included presentations by experts and by family members of people who had long-term mental illnesses, the difficulties of dealing with mental illness, the failings of the current system for helping people, and the high emotions that the subject raises were clear.

Stirring the Education Policy Pot

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:November 20, 2011
Post category:Education & Law Marquette Law School Milwaukee Milwaukee Public Schools Public Speakers at Marquette

Can you change the world with a conference? Patch things up with a few panel discussions? The answer, of course, is rarely yes. So I don’t make any huge claims about what was accomplished at the conference, “Fresh Paths: Ideas for Navigating Wisconsin’s New Education Landscape,” on Nov. 17 in Eckstein Hall. (I say that as a person who worked on organizing it.)

But stirring the pot can move the cooking process forward. Spreading important and provocative thoughts can get people thinking along lines they might not have considered previously. Bringing a wide range of committed people together can lead to conversations – informal, as well as formal – that start something rolling.

I hope, and I’m even a bit optimistic, that we served some of those purposes at the conference, sponsored by Marquette Law School and the Marquette College of Education and attended by almost 200 people. The audience included key education policy figures across the spectrum, from union leaders to an advisor to Gov. Scott Walker.

I thought of the conference as a musical piece in four movements: What can be learned from what has been done in developing a new school system in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005; getting a handle on the rapidly developing movement nationwide to overhaul teacher evaluations as a key to improving teacher effectiveness; a look at community efforts to improve educational outcomes overall in Milwaukee; and general assessments of what is needed in educational thinking to move Wisconsin forward. That meant we had three keynote speakers, all of them figures of national standing who were fresh faces to Wisconsin’s educational debate, and more than a dozen panelists, including important figures in state and local education policy.

Feel free to sample the nearly five hours of video that we have posted online from the conference. And let me share with you a few moments that stick out for me: