University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor David Ward delivered a letter to Wisconsin legislative leadership Friday encouraging the Joint Finance Committee to remove the amendment in the 2013-’15 state budget requiring the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism to leave its space on UW-Madison’s campus.
The Motion 999 amendment approved by the JFC June 5 would prohibit the WCIJ from utilizing its office space in Vilas Communication Hall as well as prohibit university employees from doing any work related to the center as part of their duties, according to the letter.
The center operates on a $400,000 budget made up of donations from private foundations, individuals and news organizations, according to its website. Upon its founding in 2009, the center agreed to provide journalism students paid internships, offer career connections and provide guest lecturers and ethics training to students in journalism classrooms in exchange for rent-free office space.
In the letter addressed to Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald, Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos, Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson and Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, Ward references the importance of these services on students of UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication for receiving “unparalleled experience in their field” and learning from trained journalists.
Ward also criticized the notion of the Legislature mandating with which organizations university faculty can and cannot collaborate.
“The best and brightest researchers–and entrepreneurs, and families, and investors in Wisconsin’s economy–cannot function when a government body holds more sway over their decisions than years of careful experience,” Ward said in the letter.
Ward referenced the university’s commitment to the process of “sifting and winnowing” which guides the university and defends the value of academic freedom.
“This commitment... contributes greatly to our ability to attract and retain faculty and staff of the highest caliber who promote the application of teaching and research to issues of importance to the state, the nation and the world,” Ward said. “We must do everything we can to maintain this commitment.”
