Why Does GOP Hate Engineers?

Nothing demonstrates what’s happened to the Republican Party more then one vote in the Joint Finance Committee this month.

Republicans on the committee voted down the long-anticipated and much-needed new engineering building on the UW Madison campus. Not so long ago that would have been a slam dunk Republican priority. Consider:

• The project has the strong support of the state’s business community.
• The state has already sunk $75 million into planning the facility.
• Engineering is key to job growth in our state and not just any jobs, but good paying ones in a variety of engineering fields, construction and spin-offs from things that engineers invent.
• Wisconsin is losing out in competition for top engineering students with other good schools, especially in the Midwest. Part of the problem is simply space. The school is turning down qualified applicants because it just doesn’t have room for them.
• Of the total $347 million project, $150 million has already been raised or committed in private donations.
• This is engineering for cryin’ out loud, not comparative literature, women’s studies or other stuff the GOP doesn’t like or doesn’t see value in.

So what accounts for their votes? In a word, wokeness. The GOP is now all about the culture wars. They don’t like the left-leaning nature of the campuses, especially Madison. They don’t like diversity, equity and inclusion. They don’t like the perception — sometimes the reality — of a hostile environment for conservative speakers and conservative thought.

I’m not unsympathetic to those concerns. I think much of this stuff has gone too far. But really, you guys? You’re going to hobble the state’s economic future because you don’t like ethnic studies programs in another part of the campus?

Moreover, the UW, under new System President Jay Rothman, is making progress. He recently banned the use of DEI statements in hiring faculty. It would make sense to take a closer look at DEI programs systemwide to make sure that they reinforce classic liberal values of free speech, merit, equality in opportunity (but not necessarily outcome) and color blindness. And, of course, in the next couple of weeks the Supreme Court is all but certain to hand down a decision on affirmative action that is likely to force more positive change in this area.

All of which is to say that it’s just dumb to harm the state’s economic future by rejecting a new engineering building because you don’t like some unrelated stuff that’s happening on campus — and unrelated stuff that seems to be getting better, not worse. (I have a feeling we’ve reached Peak Woke and things will moderate from here on.)

But that’s the state of the Republican Party today. No longer the party of business, it’s now the home of the culturally aggrieved.

Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison and Upper Peninsula based writer. He served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. More of his writing can be found at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.