Steve Nass Calls Out UW-Madison for Extreme Union Activism

MacIver News Service | June 14, 2013

[Madison, Wisc…] Representative Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) chastised UW-Madison on Thursday for their sponsorship of the Fighting Forward Conference, calling the event “higher education prioritizing liberal indoctrination of students instead of the concept of educational sifting and winnowing.”

The conference, a labor summit featuring a series of seminars and events, is ongoing until June 15 in Madison. Official co-sponsors include the UW-Madison Havens Center, Community and Environmental Sociology Department, and Gender and Women’s Studies Program, among others.

One workshop on the schedule is “Putting Militancy Back in the Labor Movement.” Don Taylor, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Extension School for Workers, is the chair of this workshop. Nass referred to this specific event as a key example of extreme union activism in the conference’s agenda.

Nass denounced the University’s involvement, arguing “the workshops aren’t only about union activism. Overall, the workshops are meant to encourage more faculty to incorporate even greater amounts of their liberal ideology in the higher education classrooms.”

The conference is part of a project to strengthen collaborations between campus-labor-community groups. It is run by the Working Class Studies Association in conjunction with the Labor and Working Class Studies Project, which is within the Havens Center in UW-Madison’s Sociology Department.

Other workshops include Transitional Steps to a Socialist Future: Visions of Economic Democracy, The Autonomy of Solidarity, and “Occupy” Session II: Movements and Cultures of Solidarity.

The full press release from Nass can be seen here.