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It's the most wonderful time of the year, time for the Wisconsin Book Festival, and Stu Levitan welcomes one of the featured presenters, University of Wisconsin Professor Chad Alan Goldberg, editor of an important new volume Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea, from our very good friends at the University of Wisconsin Press. Prof. Goldberg will be giving talk on his book live and in-person at the Madison Central Library on Saturday October 23, so Stu thought it would be a good idea to dial up an encore presentation of their conversation from this past March. And by the way, Stu's show next week will feature another UW professor giving an in-person presentation on the 23rd, Prof. Jordan Ellenberg, talking about his best-seller, Shape.According to Wisconsin statute 36.01(2), the mission of the university of Wisconsin system is “to develop human resources, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing in students heightened intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.”But not everyone agrees with that mission – especially the parts of public service, improving the human condition, and searching for truth. And over the years some people in high places have sought to change that mission in fundamental ways, even destroy it outright. Leaving us with some very important questions.What is the role of the public university in a democratic society? Specifically, what is the role of the University of Wisconsin in the democratic, pluralistic society of the 21st century? And, harking back to the words of UW President Charles Van Hise from 1905, does the beneficent influence of the university continue to reach every family in the state? If not, how do we ensure that it once again does?These are the questions Chad Alan Goldberg asks in Education for Democracy, questions he and his 11 contributors answer by examining how and why the Wisconsin Idea was born, expanded, honored – and then threatened and diminished. And they explain why it must be renewed, and suggest how to do so.The list of those contributors is quite a collection of scholars and analysts, including Prof. Katherine Cramer, author of The Politics of Resentment, environmental historian and biographer of Aldo Leopold Curt Meine, our friend, repeat guest and LGBTQ historian Dick Wagner, Wisconsin Public Radio's Emily Auerbach, and several other distinguished professors, both from the UW and elsewhere.Prof. Goldberg is very well-equipped to edit this volume, which is based on an outreach course on the Wisconsin Idea which he helped organize in 2016, and which he still teaches as Professor of Sociology. And It was Prof Goldberg who in May 2016 wrote the resolution — which the Faculty Senate adopted — expressing no confidence in the commitment by then-president Ray Cross and the Board of Regents to defend the Wisconsin Idea, which was under attack by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican legislature.Prof. Goldberg's previous books include Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought and Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare. He is also affiliated with the Center for German and European Studies, the George l. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and the GAM program in History, all here at the UW Madison.And on a personal note, Chad and Stu are both graduates of a small school now known as New College, the Honors College of Florida, where their respective graduating classes were smaller than the class roster of his Survey of Sociology course.Thankfully, Ray Cross and Scott Walker are both gone, and Professor Chad Alan Goldberg is still here. It was a pleasure to welcome him to Madison Bookbeat.
They had an obligation to take the knowledge that they were developing, to take their expertise and put it in the service of the community as a whole and the service of its elected leaders.Chad Alan GoldbergA Fulll Transcript is Available at www.democracyparadox.com.At the turn of the twentieth century, Wisconsin was at the forefront of the Progressive Movement. Wisconsin adopted the first modern state income tax. It initiated the first workers’ compensation plan. It enacted the first unemployment insurance program. Wisconsin even spearheaded important constitutional reforms like the direct election of Senators. UW Madison Professor Patrick Brenzel explains, “To say that Wisconsin was known nationally for transparent and egalitarian government is an understatement.”These reforms were the product of a relationship between the public university, legislators, and other stakeholders. It is known as the Wisconsin Idea. The Wisconsin Idea is a belief the public university has a role to contribute its research to the service of the state. A common motto is “The boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state.” The Wisconsin Idea remains central to the mission of the University of Wisconsin system to this day, but has become the subject of attacks from conservatives in recent years. Among the many efforts by Scott Walker to dismantle the administrative state included an attempt to remove the Wisconsin Idea from the university charter. It failed, but it highlights how there is a genuine debate about the role of public universities. Chad Alan Goldberg has been at the forefront of the effort to defend the Wisconsin Idea in recent years. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin Madison and the editor of the volume Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea. This book features chapters from many leading scholars in a variety of disciplines including Kathy Cramer. Our conversation discusses some of the history behind the Wisconsin Idea. But it is really about the role of the public university. How is a public university different from a private university? Why does the public support universities? And how does a public university help to shape democracy? These are important questions I never thought to ask, but will mean a lot as we work to renew democracy.More InformationDemocracy GroupApes of the State created all MusicPolitics in QuestionKey LinksEducation for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin IdeaThe Wisconsin Idea by Charles McCarthyThe Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker by Katherine CramerRelated ContentRyan Salzman is an Evangelist for PlacemakingZizi Papacharissi Dreams of What Comes After DemocracyThoughts on John Dewey's Democracy and Education
Madison authors, topics, book events and publishers Stu Levitan welcomes University of Wisconsin Professor Chad Alan Goldberg, editor of an important new volume Education for Democracy: Renewing the Wisconsin Idea, from our very good friends at the University of Wisconsin Press. But before we hear from the good professor, you should know that you have dialed us up on a very special day. It is Madison Bookbeat's last show of the winter pledge drive, giving you one more chance to call 256-2001 or go online to wortfm.org and show your support for what we've been doing every Monday afternoon for the past 14 months. And there are three folks who did just that last week whom we'd like to thank. Pete likes WORT because he learns something every time he listens; he says being in a town with an independent radio station is almost like being in college. That's right, friends, you can regard your donations as voluntary, tax-deductible tuition. Terese says she enjoyed the book we featured last week, Madeline Uraneck's “How to Make A Life: A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted,” and can't wait to read it. That's why I do this, Terese, to share with listeners the books I've found interesting and important, which I think you will, too. And our old friend Anonymous pledged with the comment, “book lovers love Madison BookBeat.” Well, MBB loves book lovers back. So be like Pete, Terese and Anonymous and give us a call at 256-2001 or go on line at wortfm.org. The book lovers in your life will thank you – as will I. Now then, to the program at hand. According to Wisconsin statute 36.01(2), the mission of the university of Wisconsin system is “to develop human resources, to discover and disseminate knowledge, to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing in students heightened intellectual, cultural and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.” But not everyone agrees with that mission – especially the parts of public service, improving the human condition, and searching for truth. And over the years some people in high places have sought to change that mission in fundamental ways, even destroy it outright. Leaving us with some very important questions. What is the role of the public university in a democratic society? Specifically, what is the role of the University of Wisconsin in the democratic, pluralistic society of the 21st century? And, harking back to the words of UW President Charles Van Hise from 1905, does the beneficent influence of the university continue to reach every family in the state? If not, how do we ensure that it once again does? These are the questions Chad Alan Goldberg asks in Education for Democracy, questions he and his 11 contributors answer by examining how and why the Wisconsin Idea was born, expanded, honored – and then threatened and diminished. And they explain why it must be renewed, and suggest how to do so. The list of those contributors is quite a collection of scholars and analysts, including Prof. Katherine Cramer, author of The Politics of Resentment, environmental historian and biographer of Aldo Leopold Curt Meine, our friend, repeat guest and LGBT historian Dick Wagner, Wisconsin Public Radio's Emily Auerbach, and several other distinguished professors, both from the UW and elsewhere. Prof. Goldberg is very well-equipped to edit this volume, which is based on an outreach course on the Wisconsin Idea which he helped organize in 2016, and which he still teaches as Professor of Sociology. And It was Prof Goldberg who in May 2016 wrote the resolution -- which the Faculty Senate adopted -- expressing no confidence in the commitment by then-president Ray Cross and the Board of Regents to defend the Wisconsin Idea, which was under attack by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican legislature. Prof. Goldberg's previous books include Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought and Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare. He is also affiliated with the Center for German and European Studies, the George l. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and the GAM program in History, all here at the UW Madison. And on a personal note, Chad and I are both graduates of a small school now known as New College, the Honors College of Florida, where I believe our respective graduating classes were smaller than the class roster of his Survey of Sociology course. I know mine was. Thankfully, Ray Cross and Scott Walker are both gone, and Professor Chad Alan Goldberg is still here. It is a pleasure to welcome him to Madison Bookbeat.
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In his new book, Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Chad Alan Goldberg looks at how social thinkers from Karl Marx, to Emile Durkheim, to Robert Park mobilized ideas and ideologies about Jews to conceptualize the big themes of modernity. Goldberg shows for example how inherited schemas, which had historically painted Jews as both backwards “Orientals” and, at the same time, as ultra-modern cosmopolitans, were mobilized consciously and unconsciously to serve different sociological theories. That is, as Goldberg illustrates, because of their contradictory and ambivalent status within the European imagination, the Jew became a central object of study and a key symbol for social theorists, a symbol that they found useful for thinking through the contradictions and ambivalences of nationhood and citizenship in France, economics and power in Germany, and urbanization and assimilation in the United States. As Goldberg writes, in a phrase borrowed from Claude Levi-Strauss, “Jews were good to think.” In this episode, we talk about Durkheim’s reactions to the reactionary right, and how his view about Jews may have informed other aspects of his thought; we talk about the Chicago schools idea of assimilation, which, as Goldberg argues, begins with recognizing the “marginal man” as a key character of the Modern era and ends with a vision of diversity and collaboration; we talk about the two different ways Karl Marx depicted Jews and their relationship to capital and to European history; and we talk about how the Jew or rather, the figure of the Jew continues to serve “as an intermediary for self-reflection in our own time.” Daveeda Goldberg is a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities at York University, in Toronto, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices