Alan J. Borsuk – Page 74 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

The Howard Fuller You Probably Don’t Know: An Advocate’s Remarkable Life

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:September 18, 2014
Post category:Civil Rights Education & Law Milwaukee Milwaukee Public Schools Public Speakers at Marquette

Fifty-five minutes into Thursday’s one-hour “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program, prominent education advocate Howard Fuller finally began talking about the last 20 years of his life. Because the conversation was dragging on? Definitely not. It was because Fuller has led such a remarkable life, with so many chapters (and so many stories to tell) that talking about earlier years was appealing and confining even a well-paced interview to an hour was hard.

Many people in Milwaukee associate Fuller with his nationally significant role as an advocate for private school vouchers and charter schools in the last couple decades. But the full story of his life offers not only a remarkable personal narrative, but provocative perspective on the development of political thinking and advocacy among African Americans in the United States since the 1950s.

Fuller, 73, provided a healthy dose of that narrative and perspective in the session with Gousha, Marquette Law School’s Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy, before a capacity audience in the Appellate Courtroom of Eckstein Hall. In much more detail, it is what he provides in his autobiography, No Struggle, No Progress: A Warrior’s Life from Black Power to Education Reform, published this month by Marquette University Press.

New Marquette Law School Poll Puts Enthusiasm of Voters in Spotlight

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:September 17, 2014
Post category:Marquette Law School Political Processes & Rhetoric Public

How important is enthusiasm among voters in determining the outcome of an election? Very, and the closer the election, the more important enthusiasm usually is because it indicates who will actually turn out to vote.

So how important are the “enthusiasm” results in the Marquette Law School Poll released Wednesday? That remains to be seen, starting with keeping an eye on the remaining rounds of polls that will be released before the Nov. 4 election.

But it is a sure bet that people working in the campaigns of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, are paying close attention to the new results. While the poll showed that the race for governor remains essentially tied, there was an uptick in how enthusiastic Walker supporters are and in the percentage of people who identified themselves as Republicans.

Overall, the poll found that Walker and Burke are tied at 46% each among registered voters. Among those considered likely voters (people who said they are registered and are certain to vote), Walker was supported by 49% and Burke 46%. In both cases, the outcomes were within the poll’s margins of error.

“I Want to Make Sure I Don’t Educate Monsters”

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:September 15, 2014
Post category:Public Speakers at Marquette

During an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” discussion at Eckstein Hall on Sept. 11, Michael Berenbaum, a prominent scholar of the Nazi Holocaust, described the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin on Jan. 20, 1942, when 15 leaders from branches of the German government met to develop ways to cooperate effectively in killing Jews by the hundreds of thousands. The leaders did not set the policy of killing Jews, he said, but they greatly increased the pace and efficiency of the genocide. At the time of Wannsee, four out of five of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust were still alive, Berenbaum said. Fifteen months later, four of five were dead.

What Berernbaum noted about the conference was that all 15 participants had university degrees. Eight had doctorates. Seven were lawyers.

A responsibility of all teachers, he said, is “to make sure that we do not create educated monsters who have all the skills and the abilities of modern men and women, all the genius of modern technology, all the capacity for creative thought, and no moral core.”

“I want to make sure that I don’t educate monsters,” Berenbaum said in summarizing his goal as an educator.