Author Archives: W. Lee Hansen

April 6, 2010 The Badger Herald “Why do you keep stigmatizing our ‘targeted minority’ students? What you write and say makes them feel bad and interferes with their academic achievement.” That is what campus administrators often tell me after something … Continue reading →

February 3, 2010 The Badger Herald “Inclusive excellence” has quietly replaced “diversity” and “Plan 2008” as the guiding star in UW-Madison’s four-decade long effort to increase minority representation and success. Why adopt a new name for its diversity program? The reason … Continue reading →

January 28, 2010 Op-Ed Submission What are readers to make of an African American engineering student’s lament (Daily Cardinal, January 27, 2010) that ”No one else looks like me” in his large 400-student lecture course? What he says is a … Continue reading →

November 20, 2009 The Cap Times UW-Madison’s long-standing focus on “targeted minorities” is a much-too-provincial view of “diversity” in the global world of the 21st century. This narrow approach ignores the many channels through which students are exposed to the … Continue reading →

November 13, 2009 The Badger Herald The prevailing strategy behind UW-Madison’s more than 40-year effort to increase the presence of “targeted minority” students remains as confusing as ever. Campus officials regularly lament the low graduation rates of targeted minority students. In … Continue reading →

April 28, 2009 Op-Ed Submission Plan 2008 which guided UW-Madison’s minority programs over the past decade died a quiet death sometime last summer. The campus newspaper of record, Wisconsin Week, printed no obituary. Friends and supporters of the Plan organized no memorial service. … Continue reading →

October 31, 2008 To Chancellor Martin Subject: On Diversity-A Suggestion? Despite more than 40 years of UW-Madison affirmative action/diversity programs involving in recent years an annual expenditure o f roughly twenty-million dollars, gaps in retention and graduation rates between minority … Continue reading →

August 28, 2008 Wisconsin State Journal Your Aug. 28 editorial, “UW diversity effort needs audit,” is most timely. As suggested by your earlier stories under the headline “UW diversity plan at age 10,” little or no information about the impact … Continue reading →

July 2007 Op-Ed Submission The Attorney General’s “informal legal opinion” okaying the new University of Wisconsin System “holistic” admissions policy late in July is disappointing. It further solidifies UW System’s use of what most people in Wisconsin view as a … Continue reading →