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Wisconsin’s Republican leaders intend to create a new leadership center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announcing Tuesday they will seek $1.5 million in annual public funding for what they said will be a bipartisan center offsetting liberal thinking on campus.
The center, which will carry the name of former Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, would set aside $500,000 per year in taxpayer funding for sponsoring speakers at UW campuses across the state, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. It would also seek private funding. Its backers cast it as a way to bridge the gap between the worlds of politics and academics.
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature still has to approve the center. It would be run by a director and overseen by a board made up of members from the Department of Political Science at UW-Madison and the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, said the center would ensure “diversity of thought” at a time when he is concerned that there is only one viewpoint on campus, according to the Associated Press. He rejected the idea that it would be a conservative think tank before saying it would hopefully “offset some of the liberal thinking.”
Vos also said the center would be dedicated to “maximum free speech” and that it would not have an agenda. Democrats slammed the move as setting up a separate, conservative public affairs school.
