Letter to the editor: 

Rep. Scott Johnson’s May 1^st commentary entitled, “Scott Johnson urges UW-Madison chancellor to ‘crack down’ on campus violence” (Fort Atkinson Online, May 1, 2024), referred to the student uprisings at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee which ran for 12 days, April 29^th through May 10^th approximately.

Rep. Johnson’s salient points were as follows:

“The rhetoric coming from these ‘protests’ is . . . not what we should be hearing from places of higher learning,” and “The First Amendment is our country’s most powerful asset, but we cannot allow violence and we certainly cannot allow radicalism to burrow and infect our children,” and “[D]o . . . . [state elected representatives] side with terrorist sympathizers or do they want safe places of higher learning? Wisconsinites deserve to know how their representatives align.”

Rep. Johnson’s positions and his direct question to his legislative colleagues are significant for the following reasons:

First, the student uprisings were arguably subsidized by you, the taxpayers, in light of the fact that in 2021-22, approximately two-thirds of UW System undergraduates, or 102,000 students, received some form of financial aid.  In the UW System during the 2021-22 academic year, 55,000 undergraduates and 8,700 graduate students received a student loan. The Pell Grant program provided $113 million to over 26,000 Wisconsin resident undergraduates (23% of resident undergraduates) with an average grant over $4,000 (University of Wisconsin System, 2023).

Moreover, according to 2021 data, Wisconsin accounted for $135.1 million in federal financial aid dollars making it 24th in the nation in use of federal financial aid funds (Hanson, 2021).

Second, the cost of law enforcement was subsidized by you, the taxpayer, when considering that “[p]olice at the University of Wisconsin at Madison arrested at least 34 people” (Washington Post, 2024).  As a consequence of another famous and current case, haven’t we been told that uprisings are a threat to public safety? The fact that all riotous offenders were released from police custody speaks volumes to the hypocrisy of the other national case.

Third, the cost of property damage on two UW system campuses, and cleaning up the kids’ mess, will be paid by you, the taxpayer.

Fourth, since when is international terrorism supported?  According to the United States Counterterrorism Center, the current war began October 7, 2023 with the incursion by Hamas into southern Israel, where Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostages (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2022).

Hamas is committed to armed resistance against Israel and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in Israel’s place. Hamas has been the de facto governing body in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it ousted the Palestinian Authority from power (United States Counterterrorism Center).

Fifth, in conjunction with the preceding point, it is a settled matter of law that all nation-states have the right to defend themselves – the “Right to Protect:” “Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” (United Nations, 2005).  Israel is a recognized nation with boundaries, a government, and a rule of law.  In contrast, Hamas is a terrorist movement, which rejects not only Israel’s right to protect itself, but also Israel’s right to exist.

Sixth, as a consequence of another current case at the national level, hasn’t it been hammered repeatedly that freedom of speech does not include the right to incite imminent lawless action? (see Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (United States Courts).  According to the Washington Post (2024), law enforcement officials at the “University of Wisconsin at Madison arrested at least 34 people” and then released them all.

What conclusion do we draw from the foregoing?

Your tax dollars fund student financial aid, which supports students in the UW System, many of whom staged an uprising in support of international terrorism, which further incurred added taxpayer expense for law enforcement, property damage and clean-up, all of which was in direct contravention of the Brandenburg prohibition against incitement of lawless action, and in complete disregard of Israel’s Right to Protect.

As to the First Amendment on free speech and peaceable assembly, William Kunstler stated, “This amendment [First Amendment to the United States Constitution] was designed so that the things we hate can have a place in the marketplace of ideas and can have an area where protest can find itself” (Kunstler & Isenberg, 1994, p. 562).

However, here in Wisconsin, whether citizens agree or not, or care or not, the pro-terrorism uprisings recently seen at UW-Madison and Milwaukee were on our dime.  But it may also be argued from Kunstler’s view, that if “the things we hate can have a place in the marketplace of ideas,” it must also be argued that those “ideas” need to be fully understood in the full context of history and rule of law.

John Donohue

Fort Atkinson