THE PROBLEM OF WHITENESS

Sean Lenon 2:00 AM #TheNewVerseNews, academic freedom, course, Dairy, Darrell Petska, Dave Murphy, funding, GOP, limerick, lucre, lugre, Madison, Nazi, The Problem of Whiteness, threat, university, Wisconsin

by Darrell Petska

Snow-covered Abraham Lincoln
statue in front of Bascom Hall
Photo by Jeff Miller, University
of Wisconsin-Madison Photo Library.

Republican legislators in Wisconsin are threatening to reject the University of Wisconsin-Madison's requests for additional state funding unless an elective course they find offensive is cancelled and its professor is fired. Rep. Dave Murphy, chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he believes the course “The Problem of Whiteness” contributes to “the polarization of races in our state.” —Slate, December 22, 2016

Some rubes in America's Dairy Stand
say U'd better teach just what they command
or they'll wave their Nazi luger
i.e. hold back on their lucre—
curdling Dairy into the New Reich Land.

Darrell Petska's writing appears in The Missing Slate, Whirlwind, Verse-Virtual, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, previously in TheNewVerse.News, and numerous other publications. Darrell cut short his career as a university editor to be the arbiter of his own words. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.