The News
After a months-long standoff between the University of Wisconsin system and the Republican-controlled Legislature, the two parties brokered a deal to release $800 million in state funds — for long-delayed UW pay raises and key campus building projects — if the system agreed to realign dozens of diversity, equity, and inclusion positions and support several other Republican-backed priorities. The system’s Board of Regents initially rejected the deal last Saturday but reversed its vote on Wednesday, a move that has raised concerns about the precedent for future negotiations over public higher-education funding in the state.
The Details
Following months of negotiations behind closed doors, the university system and Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the state’s Assembly, reached an agreement to release millions of dollars for the system.
The deal clears the way for salary increases approved in the state budget but held up by Republicans, as well as additional funds for several campus building projects, notably a new engineering building on the flagship Madison campus. In exchange, the system agreed to realign at least 43 DEI positions through “normal attrition” and “active restructuring and reimagining” to “focus on academic and student success.”
The deal will also freeze the total number of jobs across the system through 2026, with exemptions for faculty members, student jobs, and some instructional and research posts. Under the agreement, the system will support direct-admissions legislation that will admit the top 10 percent of Wisconsin high schoolers to any campus in the system and the top 5 percent into Madison. The agreement also requires additional concessions from Madison: It must kill its program that aims to hire more diverse faculty members, and it must seek donations to fund a position that uplifts “conservative political thought, classical economic theory, or classical liberalism.”
Vos kicked off the funding battle more than six months ago with a proposed $32-million spending cut equal to the amount that he said the system spent on DEI-related work, as well as a measure to eliminate 188 DEI positions. In July, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, vetoed that measure but left the $32-million cut intact, money that is now slated for campus programs for work-force development.
Still, the political pressure campaign endured: Vos withheld budgeted salary increases for about 35,000 university-system employees, prompting a lawsuit from Evers, and Republicans declined to fund a new engineering building at the flagship.
Jay O. Rothman, the university system’s president, and Jennifer L. Mnookin, the chancellor at Madison, last week backed the deal that was eventually approved, emphasizing that the compromise — while not perfect — was the most feasible option and the result of lengthy negotiations. However, in an unusually close vote, the board rejected the deal on Saturday, 9 to 8, following testimony in which regents spoke about what diversity programs meant to them.
In the wake of that unexpected vote, Republican leaders turned up the heat, urging the regents to reconvene and accept the deal, saying it was the legislators’ final offer. One Republican state senator, Chris Kapenga, went as far as to insinuate that regents should reconsider the proposal — or risk losing their seats. (Four regents appointed by the Democratic governor remain unconfirmed by the Legislature.)
“You would think these regents would have learned from the tone-deaf Ivy League leadership that was removed last week,” wrote Kapenga, referring to the congressional hearing on antisemitism that led to a full-blown investigation and the resignation of M. Elizabeth Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s good to know before their upcoming Senate confirmation votes that several regents chose their sacred ideology over getting our students ready for their careers.”
Just three days after its initial vote, the regents met in a closed-door session that was convened so quickly that legislative lawyers argued it probably violated open-meetings laws. The board scheduled a vote on an identical resolution on Wednesday. It passed 11 to 6.
A system spokesperson told The Chronicle that two regents who had flipped their votes were not available for comment. The third did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.
“I want to assure you of this: Our commitment to students, faculty, and staff of different races, creeds, religions, veteran status, socioeconomic status, or political beliefs is a core value of the Universities of Wisconsin,” one of those three regents, Karen Walsh, the board’s president, said at the Wednesday meeting. “This proposal does not put that in jeopardy. We are not turning away from this core value.”
The Backdrop
The deal drew a backlash from students, faculty members, and Democratic legislators, whose chief critiques were that it sacrifices services for students of color in exchange for state funding. Criticism also focused on procedural concerns and the secrecy surrounding the compromise, which was made public just one day before the regents first voted on it.
“We ask the question, Who was at the table making negotiations on behalf of our black and brown students on campus?” the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement. “Who decided to undervalue our students and staff of color by setting a price tag on their inclusion on our campuses? Were our students and students’ interests even considered?”
MGR Govindarajan, a senior at Madison who is also the city alderman representing the campus, said the process and final decision had left students of color feeling as if their priorities were “always on the negotiating table.”
“They can say it’s a compromise that still values their core values of diversity and inclusion,” Govindarajan said, “but the process itself was not diverse or inclusive of anyone else.”
Evers, who supported the board’s initial vote to reject the deal, said he was “disappointed” and “frustrated” with the process that led to the re-vote and with its outcome. “This exercise has been about one thing — the relentless political tantrums, ultimatums, and threats of retribution by legislative Republicans, most especially Speaker Robin Vos, his negotiation-by-bullying tactics, and general disdain for public education at every level,” the governor said in a written statement.
Rothman, on X, defended the deal after its passage, noting that the system remains committed to diversity efforts while realigning its DEI positions. “Compromise can be extraordinarily difficult,” he wrote, “and I acknowledge that not everyone will be happy.”
The Stakes
Wisconsin Republicans’ choice to withhold funding as a bargaining chip represents an unusual tactic in the national efforts to curtail diversity programs, which other states have typically pursued through legislation.
In Wisconsin, which has a storied history of higher-education funding battles that have left the state’s public universities among the lowest funded in the nation, the deal has set off alarm bells about the precedent for future budget negotiations. Concerns about funding for the system are especially prominent as 10 out of its 13 universities face structural deficits that have forced layoffs in recent months.
“So many people have been worrying that this is a slippery slope,” Govindarajan said. “As soon as the Board of Regents cede their power to the Legislature,” he said, it’s “going to hold them hostage on anything going forward.”
Vos already appears to see the deal’s success as an opening. “We finally have turned the corner and gotten real reforms enacted,” Vos wrote on X. “Republicans know this is just the first step in what will be our continuing efforts to eliminate these cancerous DEI practices on UW campuses.”
