Tim Lacy on Ed. Chad Alan Goldberg’s *Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea*

With Education for Democracy we see a continuation of interest in, and new explorations of, the Wisconsin Idea. First outlined by Charles McCarthy in his 1912 book with the same title, that educational ideal emerged in higher education after the turn of the twentieth century and during the Progressive Era. The Wisconsin Idea emphasized the development of knowledge and intellect for the eventual service to society and state—and not the academy alone. The end result was a university integrated in all of the basic functioning of the state. It enabled the university to become a known and friendly entity to citizens in every municipality and county. The Wisconsin Idea was truly developed in that state but also implemented in others, evidenced in extension programs and all sorts of adult education outreach. It declined in prominence, however, by the 1980s, suffering from deemphasis, criticism, and lack of nourishment by political and higher education leadership.

The recent trend of renewed interest has been ongoing for several years, instigated by attacks from conservative politicians in that state. They took aim the perceived liberalism of its flagship campus in Madison and the system generally. Higher education has been a preoccupation of conservatives since the 1930s when they began to see new social and political threats originating there. I first noticed renewed academic interest in the Wisconsin Idea in 2016 with J. David Hoeveler’s intellectual biography, John Bascom and the Origins of the Wisconsin Idea (Wisconsin). A few years later, in 2018, there appeared a newly edited edition of Charles McCarthy’s original 1912 text, The Wisconsin Idea (Cornerstone Press), edited by Ross K. Tangedal and Jeff Snowbarger. (Full disclosure: I reviewed both texts for the Middle West Review.) Other works beyond these may exist but I have not seen them.[1] Those books suggest momentum for the “renewal” of foundational Wisconsin Idea tenets, as indicated in the subtitle of Education for Democracy.

An existential event helped instigate this intellectual interest. Beginning in the cold late winter months of early 2011, Wisconsin commanded the attention of political actors and interested observers from across the nation. The state’s newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, who had just commenced his first term in January, began what would become a sustained, direct assault on policies, laws, and institutions that had been cherished by political progressives for nearly 100 years. Walker and his backers—the Koch brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Bradley Foundation, and cheering red-state conservatives and GOP leaders—put a sign and symbol of anti-oligarchical solidarity on the defensive. No mere culture wars skirmish, the Walker governorship represented an action-oriented, head-to-head conflict, continuing until 2018, with the notion of the public good as instantiated through the various living, material results of the so-called “Wisconsin Idea.” In Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea, one can read about the roots of Walker’s and his colleagues’ assault in Lewis A. Friedland’s commendable essay, “Laboratory of Oligarchy” (pp. 225-254). Lewis and many other authors in this collection, edited by Chad Alan Goldberg, explain and contextualize the events of 2011.

This collection, however, does more than merely recount and historicize the Walker governorship. Its essays uncover the long history of various strands of the Wisconsin Idea—covering conservation, the liberal arts, community theater, journalism education, LGBTQ research, and state-level politics. The larger purpose the collection, evidenced in its title, is to provide grounds for renewal for both idea and democratic politics in general. Goldberg underscores this when he notes that contributors “are on the whole sympathetic to the Wisconsin Idea though not unquestioning” (p. 30, italics mine). The goal of the collection is “to persuade the public of the value of the Wisconsin Idea while also acknowledging the need for its ongoing development to achieve more fully the goals it set for itself” (p. 30). While it “emerged in a particular time and place [it] has a more general relevance because the problems it addressed are confined neither to Wisconsin nor to the past.” The Wisconsin Idea “has changed and developed since its beginning but has remained tied to the core principle of service to democracy…” (p. 1).

In true Deweyan fashion, Education for Democracy hearkens to the progressive-pragmatist education philosopher’s maxim, stated in many different ways in many of his texts, that education is continuous growth. While schools and education institutions comprised, for John Dewey, only a “relatively superficial means” of education and the formation of democracy, they still mattered. The Wisconsin Idea became, in effect, a practical demonstration of Dewey’s goal, stated In the Public and Its Problems (1927), to realize a democratic society, a “Great Society” and hopefully a “Great Community.” The ideal for Dewey was to construct democratic, cosmopolitan, neighborly communities. In them citizens would flourish in a sustainable fashion.

Dewey never told his readers how to get there but the Wisconsin Idea served, over his time and beyond, as one roadmap—a living example of citizens learning to be democratic by continuous practice and action. The Public and its Problems correlates well with the role of the Wisconsin Idea in that it advocates for scholars to be engaged as public intellectuals. Dewey saw democracy as an idea that was “wider and fuller” than that of the mere state.^[2] The diverse, critically partisan contributors to Education for Democracy seem to concur that the Wisconsin Idea has to continue to grow and adapt to changing social, cultural, and political conditions in order to stay relevant to its state, to remain dynamic as a symbol for progressive government.

The book opens with a preface by unknown administrator in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Sociology, Patrick Brenzel. An alum of the same campus (in mechanical engineering, ironically)—and the son of an alum too—Brenzel was outraged and
disheartened” by the events outlined above instigated by the Walker administration (p. xiii). Brenzel felt that the “need to recover the legacy of the Wisconsin Idea [was] clear” (p. xii). As a result he pushed his department to teach on the Wisconsin Idea—to offer a course and an attendant public lecture series.

In a 2018 professional development session where Brenzel taught academic advisors and student peer advisors about the department’s course, he learned that only one of 200 people in the room was aware of the 1912 book by Charles McCarthy on the Wisconsin Idea (p. xii). Despite the Wisconsin Idea being a symbol of the Progressive Era that has traditionally been taught to nearly every U.S. undergraduate enrolled in a post-Civil War history survey, new staff exhibited miniscule awareness of what Brenzel called the “almost sacramental” mission and vision of their employing institution (p. xiii). His goal, then, in the course is to prevent the dissemination and implementation of Walker’s new higher education vision that degraded the old one’s cooperative mission (p. xiii). Brenzel believes the “spirit” of the University of Wisconsin is “transcendent,” and that working for it is “a noble thing to do” (p. xi-xii).

While few contributors approach Brenzel’s enthusiasm, dedication, and devotion, a core belief in the main mission of the Wisconsin Idea permeates all of the book’s essays. Chad Alan Goldberg’s opening piece (pp. 2-52) introduces a core issue that permeates political differences about the value of the Wisconsin Idea. Referencing a John Buenker history of the university published in 1998, Goldberg notes a key dichotomy in philosophical foundations of modern American universities.[3] On the one hand, there is the “marketplace model” in which “society and polity are conceived as arenas of competition for power, wealth, and status.” In this view the “public interest” is merely the “sum of competing interests.” Government facilitates opportunities and private pursuits, and politicians merely “mediate disputes among warring competitors” (p. 8). This the conservative and/or neoliberal model of running a university in relation to the social and political commons of the United States.

The other model of assumptions outlined by Goldberg, and Buenker, is what drives the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Idea: the “commonwealth model.” This involves the “language of social bonds” and defines the public interest as a “collective good” that “transcends…particular concerns.” This kind of good can be “achieved through enlightened cooperation fostered by public institutions.” This model forwards a “shared commitment to advance the common good” (p. 8).  In addition, the Wisconsin Idea “valorized social investment, professional expertise, and social efficiency,” as well as “a democratic and practical form of public education” (p. 8). The last involved and required a “partnership” between the state’s university, with its expertise, and “an increasingly professionalized government”—meaning bureaucrats and not necessarily its politicians (p. 9). Goldberg relays the words of Gwen Drury (who wrote this volume’s Afterword) in reminding us that ‘service’ at the University of Wisconsin was no elitist endeavor of “noblesse oblige” but rather an ethic that was “expressly egalitarian and democratic” (p. 6).

Goldberg does not neglect criticisms of the Wisconsin Idea. He provides an extensive consideration of critiques by Michael S. Joyce, a prominent conservative who led the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (located in Milwaukee). Goldberg addresses a litany of conservative concerns—e.g., that the Wisconsin Idea tramples individualism, that it fosters a ‘New Class’ sensibility, it promotes elitism, it ignores parents’ rights, it cares not for voluntary organizations, and it disguises the special interests of experts (pp. 15-21). Goldberg also explores the criticisms of Thomas C. Leonard, who in the former’s words reminded us in a 2016 book of the “repugnant expressions of elitism, sexism, nativism, and racism” of Progressive Era reformers.[4] While they rejected laissez-faire economics they also embraced eugenics, immigrant restrictions, and white supremacy. Leonard builds on a long-standing question of whether the Progressive Era was really about social control instead of merely social efficiency. To Goldberg, he encouraged, as a solution, a libertarian and utilitarian individualism to promote freedoms (p. 22).

By outlining these critiques, Goldberg telegraphs many points in the book’s essays. Each will utilize the practical workings and instantiations of the Wisconsin Idea as evidence against its critics. But the volume also concedes some points and offers comment, or advice, on how to move beyond historical failures that enabled political and ideological opposition. The goal, as Goldberg reminds us, is “to persuade the public of the value of the Wisconsin Idea while also acknowledging the need for its ongoing development to achieve more fully the goals it set for itself” (p. 30). Channeling the words of John Stark in a 1995 essay, a major goal is to move beyond the former reliance on “government elites, university administrators, and faculty” and to address “interests, circumstances, and nonelites.”[5] To survive and thrive, the Wisconsin Idea must rely on groups rather than “individual will and desire” (p. 34). Everyone must be invested, and progressive ideals that survive must come from below, from the people, and serve them well.

Given the space I have allowed it in this review, you have probably deduced, rightly, that I think Goldberg’s Introduction is just fantastic. It braids scholarly highlights and thoughtful criticisms of the Wisconsin Idea, bringing together the past and present to summarize the state of things. It deserves an independent reading. Everyone who cares about the state of higher education in our present-day society should meditate on Goldberg’s analysis.

While all of the volume’s ten topical essays deserve attention, I will relay the contents of just a few.

In a relatively straightforward historical exploration, Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen reinforces the power of journalism as a public good by recounting the past work Willard Grosvenor Bleyer. Bleyer was the University of Wisconsin’s “first journalism professor and a pioneering voice in journalism education” (p. 77). Cieslik-Miskimen argues that “Bleyer was resolute in his conviction that newspaper work was equivalent to—if not more integral than—law and medicine in modern society.” Journalists were important to “the welfare of society and to the success of democratic government” (p. 78). Bleyer’s resolutions about these matters resulted not only in a firm support of journalism education, but also in “public outreach” and intensive work in the community to “legitimate journalism as a field of study, …[and to] improve reporting and win continued support for the work of journalism itself” (p. 79).

Bleyer gave a speech in 1921 to inaugurate the opening Northwestern University’s now-famous Medill School of Journalism. He reminded the audience that poorly trained or incompetent journalists could, in their daily work, poison democracy by creating “false impressions,” providing “inaccurate information,” or by “color[ing] information…unconsciously.” Cieslik-Miskimen recalls that Bleyer’s personal motto was “Accuracy Always” (p. 80). The direct relevance of these matters to today’s news and reporting climate cannot be lost on intelligent readers. Bleyer deplored sensationalism and believed that solution lay in journalism education (pp. 83-85). In the context of this volume, we are reminded that Bleyer’s life’s work—his crusade for good journalism and professional journalism education—was enabled by the Wisconsin Idea.

One expects some emphasis on university programs, such as Bleyer and journalism, in the history of the Wisconsin Idea. Maryo Gard Ewell, however, foregrounds the arts in the community. Ewell’s father, Robert E Gard (1910-1992), spent thirty-five years of his life as a Wisconsin faculty member devoted to assisting the people of the state in making art and building community arts programs (p. 97). Ewell’s chapter, “ ‘No Mute, Inglorious Milton’: The Arts and the Wisconsin Idea,” outlines that story. The title comes from the university’s past president, Charles Van Hise, uttered during a 1908 speech delivered to the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of Milwaukee. He said (with apologies to present readers for the gendered and ableist language):

“I would have no mute, inglorious Milton in this state; I would have everybody who has a talent have an opportunity to find his way so far as his talent will carry him, and that is only possible through university extension supplementing the schools and colleges.”

In recounting her father’s life, Ewell offers that the methods for providing these opportunities were “outreach, service, the presence of university faculty members in every hamlet of the state, and the virtual presence of educators on radio and television.” The faculty would never miss a chance to partner with community leaders.

Ewell’s tracing of Gard’s life helps to show how he entered an existing story of the development of fine arts in the state. Well before Gard’s arrival was the creation of the Wisconsin Dramatic Society (in 1910). That entity sought plays from writers in the state and produced them in its communities. It worked with the university’s Extension program (pp. 99-100). The Extension program also worked with musicians and helped to create WHA radio (p. 101). Through the College of Agriculture, a past dean of the college sought to invigorate farm communities by incorporating elements of the Danish folk school movement in its work. This meant that Wisconsin farmers should be exposed to “good literature, art, music, [and] history—the cultural side of life—as well as the practical training for better farming” (pp. 102-103). Gard enters the story in relation to the creation of the “Wisconsin Idea Theater” office in 1945. He taught writing workshops to help regular people articulate their ideas in the form of plays. This resulted in the subsequent creation of the Wisconsin Rural Writers Association (pp. 107-111). Ewell relays that Gard saw “the arts as a way of morphing hard community conversations from dysfunctional bickering to proactive community building, creating a new kind of art at that same time” (p 109).

Gard’s ideas and work gained national prominence in the late 1960s. When the National Endowment of the Arts was created in 1965, Gard and a few associates submitted a proposal to promote the arts in five Wisconsin towns with populations totaling 10,000 or fewer people. As part of the grant, over a period of three years each town would experience touring events by professionals, obtain assistance in exploring the arts through classes and workshops, and also receive help in forming local arts organizations. After its completion, the findings were written up in a report published in 1969 titled “The Arts in the Small Community: A National Plan.” Ewell reports that around 40,000 copies of it were distributed around the United States (pp. 110-111). The Wisconsin Idea, then, would become virtually present in every rural arts council around the nation.

From the arts we turn toward LGBTQ rights. This reviewer was pleasantly surprised to see an essay in the volume on this topic. R. Richard Wagner, in a piece titled “Wisconsin Academics Outing LGBT policies,” recounts the history of how Wisconsin became “the first gay-rights state” due, in part, to the work of academics. He argues that “faculty and staff advocates for change took up the matter of LGBT rights and influenced the actual changes from traditional policies of repression” (p. 148, 149). Wagner recognizes that this most likely was never a goal of the Wisconsin Idea’s originators, but that the idea was capacious enough to include the work of midcentury boundary-breaking scholars.

The author of this unique contribution, Richard Wagner, identified as a “community scholar” who earned a PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971. He has authored two works on the state’s LGBTQ community: We’ve Been Here All Along: Wisconsin’s Early Gay History and Coming Out, Moving Forward: Wisconsin’s Recent Gay History. Both were published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Wagner had been active in LGBTQ politics in the state since the late 1970s. He died unexpectedly in December 2021 after this volume’s publication.

In the essay Wagner builds a detailed story that resulted not only in the decriminalization of LGBTQ sexuality but also the passage of a host of positive laws in the 1980s. The story begins with reviewing historical police reports from the first few decades of the twentieth century. These revealed something of the existence and lives of LGBTQ people while their behaviors were criminalized (pp. 151-152). Wagner then moves to vice attacks in the Progressive Era, exploring Wisconsin’s Teasdale Committee and the work of state senator Howard Teasdale and Wisconsin sociologist Edward Ross (pp. 151-153). From Ross, Wagner looks at the work on “sexual minorities” done by another Wisconsin sociologist, John Gillin. Gillin’s work on criminals and sexual minorities, in the 1930s and 1940s, led him to understand homosexuality as “a status, not a criminal choice.” He was prescient of more recent thinking in that he “hinted at…sexual fluidity” and the possibility of “changed gender expression” (pp. 153-155).

Then, moving to the post-World War II era, Wagner examines the medicalization of sexuality in endocrinology. He also reviews (Madison) campus student health policies and Dr. Benjamin Glover’s work studying student homosexuality (pp. 155-160). The chapter concludes with a close look at Wisconsin’s 1973 “landmark Safransky case,” which was a “legal challenge for gay rights” in the state with regard to parenting. That case received a legal brief from Wisconsin political science professor David Adamany, who was an out gay man and an advisor for the governor (p. 163). Adamany’s brief was ultimately set aside by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, finding that the plaintiff, Paul Safransky, was not a fit parent. Despite the brief’s fate, Adamany had, to Wagner, shown the world that homosexuality was complex and nuanced—that homosexuals could be productive citizens and deserved protected rights. All of this work culminated, in 1983, with the state legislature passing a “consenting adults bill” that protected “sexual privacy rights” (p. 167). The Wisconsin Idea, then, had contributed to the long progress of LGBTQ rights in the state.

Last but not least, I would be personally remiss to not mention the University of Wisconsin system’s support of one of the more successful iterations of the great books idea. The topic arises in a very brief essay by Emily Auerbach titled “The Power to Change Lives: The UW Odyssey Project” (pp. 199-204). There are Odyssey projects located around the nation, including one in my home state of Illinois. They derive from the work of Earl Shorris and were outlined in his 2000 book, Riches for the Poor: The Clemente Course in the Humanities (Norton). The project consists of creating reading and conversation programs for needy, underprivileged individuals. It is about, in the words of Auerbach (who is the director of Wisconsin’s program), bringing them “the best works of moral philosophy, literature, history, and art.” These great books programs are provided “free of charge to those trapped in poverty” (p. 200).

Auerbach had, at the writing of this collection, been a part of Wisconsin’s Odyssey Project for seventeen years—after first having served as an English professor at Wisconsin-Madison for two decades (p. 199). In her time directing the Odyssey Project she has delivered great books to “diverse adults” in a special iteration of the program that also teaches “creative writing, journalism, theater, [and] music” (p. 201). Despite operating outside of Bard College’s Clemente Course strictures (Bard is in New York), they still follow many of the Clement Course tenets, offering free tuition, books, and childcare. Students earn credits in the University of Wisconsin system, and also produce a newsletter, the Odyssey Oracle. The program has been so successful that they have created new iterations, such as Odyssey Behind Bars, Odyssey Junior, Onward Odyssey, and even an Odyssey Family Learning Center (pp. 201-203). Auerbach outlines positive student response in her essay that demonstrate the practical effects of the program. She believes it “epitomizes the Wisconsin Idea in action” (p. 201).

While every essay in this collection has one or more virtues, there is at least one that is inconsistent with the others. While I am a personal fan of the person and work of David Hoeveler, his contribution sits askew from the rest. Titled “John Bascom and the Wisconsin Idea: Legacy and Prospects,” pp. 53-75), it opens by exploring the deeper historical roots of the Wisconsin Idea through Bascom and his intellectual commitments. That comprises the first five pages of his reflection, but the next thirteen seek “to take the measure of the Wisconsin Idea in its contemporary situation”—to “look at politics and…the battle of ideas” in recent Wisconsin events (p. 58). In that section Hoeveler, like many others around the nation, decries the decreases in state/public support for higher education. He also notes the increased turn toward private entities and corporations to make up for lost revenue. The service ideal embedded in the Wisconsin Idea took a turn toward material profits and business expansion (p. 60). At this point Hoeveler has traced a story similar to public institutions in other states.

But then Hoeveler turns toward campus speech issues—and he has an axe to grind. He takes on a conservative tone, criticizing the university for instituting too many protections from “harsh words and illiberal ideologies”—i.e., allowing for safe spaces, trigger warnings, security against microaggressions (p. 60). Hoeveler then takes time to endorse the “Chicago Principles” of free speech, first articulated in a 2014 Report of its Committee on Freedom of Expression, convened by University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer. This reference by Hoeveler is worthy of a deeper meditation.

The 2014 Report called for “uninhibited” free inquiry and “the broadest possible latitude” in speech rights. It reminded the public of past Chicago President Hanna Holborn Gray’s maxim  that “education should not be intended to make people comfortable.” The report flatly states that “it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.” It adds that civility and mutual respect “can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas.” It does contain a paragraph that carves out exceptions for expression that “violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University.” The authors add that “these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with…completely free and open discussion of ideas.”

Hoeveler endorses these principles without reservation. He then recounts that recent invitations to outside speakers in the University of Wisconsin system favored, in the words of Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, “individuals of liberal political persuasion.” Hoeveler adds that “the greater threat to academic freedom today comes from the radical left, less than from the radical right” (p. 62). Political correctness, as well as antifa agitators for deplatforming, are the real scourges of our campuses.

The authors of this volume, including Hoeveler, could not have anticipated that I would read these words right after the events of January 6, 2021. That was the day that followers of then President Donald Trump attempted a coup under the auspices of free expression. The event was advertised by the president and his supporters as a rally that might get a little “wild” (a word used by Trump in a prior Tweet to invite people to the event). I am not saying that every campus rally or political gathering will result in an attempted coup. I am saying, however, that the event points to a problem with the Chicago Principles and Hoeveler’s unreserved endorsement of them: they give too free of a reign to the possibilities of hate speech, purposed misinformation (i.e., agnotology), authoritarianism, and anti-democratic thought. We must engage “deeply offensive” speech, say the Chicago Principles authors.

The Chicago Principles also underplay the long-running theme that conservative advocacy for free speech very often comes from a place of restricting, or resisting, the rights and speech of others. Speaking of those others, of those of a “liberal bent,” it is telling that there were no “antifa” members, democratic socialists, or liberals at the 1/6/2021 event that tried to overturn a free election. No sincere champion of the Wisconsin Idea would ever seek to abuse free speech rights in that way. Every other contributor to the Goldberg collection wrote in the spirit of widening rights and privileges for others. Hoeveler’s contribution, then, is out of step. It seems to want to protect “deeply offensive” forms of inquiry and speech that would overturn the human rights of others.

Almost every edited collection read by this reviewer contains at least one out-of-step essay. But not every collection places that contribution in the front, after its introduction. Going from Goldberg’s excellent piece, as outlined above, to Hoeveler’s, was disorienting. That disorientation was not used to create an opening for a positive intervention, but rather forced me to discipline myself to continue. The Cieslik-Miskimen essay follows, and does indeed reinforce the need for facts and truth in journalism. But it does not temper the radical libertarianism of the Chicago Principles. The University of Chicago is left alone until Jane L. Collins picks up the work of the Mont Pelerin Society and its connections to Chicago’s economics work in the postwar era (pp. 215-216, 218).

One other author in the collection does address Hoeveler’s essay. In the Afterword, Gwen Drury notes that Hoeveler exhibits an overly-intellectual philosophy of higher education that emphasizes “development of the intellect for its own sake.” But this kind of focus on a “house of intellect,” evident in the history of the University of Chicago, is out of rhythm with the Wisconsin Idea—given its emphasis on service and using knowledge on “building democracy.” That effort necessarily involves equity and inclusion. The lack of intellectual service to the state can be just as detrimental to higher education and the Wisconsin Idea, Drury argues, as the narrow focus on technical pursuits of vocation (p. 273).

The possible dangers of running a university based on the Chicago Principles are not emphasized in Hoeveler’s piece. We live in a new era of anti-racism and inclusivity that has been fostered around the nation, and in our colleges and universities, since the killing of George Floyd and the summer of protests that followed in 2020. Heightened sensitivities about racism, bias, microaggressions, and sexism are less about the fear of harsh words than signals of a new era of intelligence about inclusivity. Democracy demands some sensitivity to its most vulnerable and oppressed members. Even if we concede that Socratic dialogue can sometimes feel rough to a new student, we must acknowledge that the method is not going to foster critical thinking in students who are utterly turned off by a professor’s merciless, insensitive focus on the intellect alone. The intellect exists in a holistic personal context of sensibilities, feeling, emotion, as well as in a particular social, political, and economic circumstances. Let us repeat, loudly for those in the back, that anti-racism and the stamping out of racial bias are also intellectual ideals.

Most all of the essays in Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea demonstrate these coordinate principles of democracy. They show the superiority and adaptability of the Wisconsin Idea in the face of other campus environments that encourage bullies, allow for continued sexism and racism, and give oxygen to authoritarians. The essays reveal the Wisconsin Idea to be a malleable entity that can, if willed and directed, support inclusion, equity, and diversity.

Every library that values higher education should make space on its shelves for this collection. All leaders of public universities should meditate on its essays—reflections that show how their institutions can both meet people where they are, and also lift them toward higher aspirations.

[1] One I have not yet read is Dan Kaufman, The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2019). Thanks to Lauren Lassabe Shepherd for alerting me to this work.

[2] John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916; Classic Literature Reprint, 2015), chapter 4 passim, 6; Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett, Dewey’s Dream: Universities and Democracies in an Age of Education Reform (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 37, 48, 51, 58-59. See also Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems (1927) and Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).

[3] John D. Buenker, The History of Wisconsin, vol. 4, The Progressive Era, 1893-1914 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1998).

[4] Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

[5] John O. (Jack) Stark, The Wisconsin Idea: The University’s Service to the State (Madison: Legislative Reference Bureau, 1995).