State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, released an op-ed Tuesday urging for more conservative speakers to be hosted at UW System campuses.
The op-ed, titled “A Free Speech Challenge to the UW System” and published by Right Wisconsin, claims liberal ideology is disproportionately offered at university-sponsored lectures across the state.
The article calls on the UW System to “practice what they preach,” referring to a Board of Regents statement released last year emphasizing the need for free speech.
“It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they, or others, find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive,” Vos wrote. “Although the university greatly values civility, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussions of ideas.”
Vos says past speakers do not reflect a commitment to intellectual diversity. He highlights data his office collected from open records requests on the 50 top-paid speakers in 2015, which include only “a handful of conservatives.”
He cites the highest-paid speaker as Kathy Ober, a former professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the co-founder of the Social Justice Training Institute, who spoke at UW-Milwaukee three times last year for a total of $45,000.
Also among the top-paid speakers was Michael Sam, the first openly gay player in the NFL, who spoke at UW-La Crosse last year.
It is unclear whether any UW-Madison speakers made the list, although former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican, was the spring commencement speaker in 2014.
