Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Rebuilding intangibles like trust will be needed for schools to recover, expert says at Law School program

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:March 9, 2021
Post category:Milwaukee Public Schools Public Speakers at Marquette

This appeared as a column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 7, 2021.

As we reach the one-year mark in the greatest crisis American education has faced since the public schooling began taking its current form in the 19^th Century, there are so many tangible things to be concerned about. Getting more kids back to school in person, especially now that teachers are getting vaccinated. What to do to help kids cover educational ground they didn’t cover in past months. How to use the coming summer. Money issues. Handling continuing health precautions. On and on.

But underlying the tangible issues are intangibles that also need big attention. I was involved in a virtual program on March 2 sponsored by the Marquette Law School and the Marquette College of Education on the state of K-12 education. Here are a few valuable thoughts from that session, emphasizing some of those intangibles:

Trust. A good school community is one where people – adults and children – are confident that, overall, things are being done well and for the good of all. There is a sense of everyone being on the same team. Trust underlies all of this. And the relationships and assumptions involved in trust have taken big steps backwards in many communities. That shows up especially in disputes nationwide over whether to have school in person.

Northwestern Mutual Exec Describes Efforts to Improve Opportunities for Black Entrepreneurs

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:February 17, 2021
Post category:Milwaukee Public Speakers at Marquette

Black people who have the potential to be successful entrepreneurs and business leaders have rarely reached that potential, given the impact of systemic racism, including the fact that few are in positions where they can take part in the networking that leads to so many opportunities.

Abim Kolawole thinks change can occur and steps being taken now will have positive impact. And he is in a major position to help that become so.

Kolawole, a top executive of Northwestern Mutual – he was recently named vice-president of “customer experience integration and promoting journey “ and was previously vice president of digital innovation — said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program posted on Marquette Law School’s website on February 17, 2021, that there is a greater sense of urgency around creating opportunity in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Why Do Republicans Overperform in the Wisconsin State Assembly? Partisan Gerrymandering vs. Political Geography

Post author:John Johnson
Post published:February 11, 2021
Post category:Lubar Center

(This essay is adapted from an On the Issues program with Craig Gilbert, Mike Gousha, and John Johnson. Click here to view that program in its entirety.)

Wisconsin has a confusing political personality. A casual observer might perceive it as a blue state. After all, 2016 is the only year a Democratic presidential candidate lost the state since 1984. On the other hand, it feels very purple when you consider that Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis to win an outright majority of the vote. In still more ways, you might think this is a solidly red state. Republicans have controlled the State Assembly for all but three years of my lifetime. Rather than encouraging a mood of bipartisanship, I think this combination of red and blue traits leads many Republicans and Democrats alike to believe that they are the “true” representatives of Wisconsin who are only stymied by the illegitimate interference of the other party.

My preferred description is that Wisconsin, politically speaking, is not one moderate state; rather, it is one very conservative state overlapping another very liberal one. This state of affairs, after all, isn’t new. Wisconsin gave the nation the rabid anti-communist senator Joseph McCarthy at the same time Milwaukee elected its third mayor from the Socialist Party. The varied nature of Democratic and Republican coalitions in Wisconsin—both geographically and demographically—gives each party advantages in certain kinds of elections. Republicans have long performed better in the state legislature than their statewide vote share would suggest. This advantage accelerated after the 2011 redistricting, by some measures doubling their previous advantage. But how much of the built-in Republican advantage in the State Assembly is due to deliberate partisan gerrymandering and to what extent it is the natural consequence of Wisconsin’s political geography?