9 in 10 Wisconsin Union 'Distinguished Lecture Series' Speakers are Progressive

The speaker series has an annual budget of $150,000 but hasn't hosted a conservative in nearly a decade

Memorial Union, photo by Ben Rothove

The Wisconsin Union Directorate’s Distinguished Lecture Series has hosted hundreds of notable individuals in its nearly four-decade history, including public intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr., politicians such as George McGovern, and entrepreneurs such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

The most recent speaker it hosted was a drag queen named Trixie Mattel.

The lecture series regularly brings progressive speakers to campus, but conservatives are increasingly rare. The Madison Federalist analyzed the political views of DLS speakers from 2005 through 2025, categorizing them as left-leaning, right-leaning, or other. In this time frame, more than 89 percent of speakers were liberal, but only 3 percent were conservative or libertarian. In the past nine years, there were zero openly conservative speakers.

In an emailed statement to The Federalist, DLS Committee Chairman Omar Shahin said the committee “aims to take an approach to speaker selection that reflects voices of the committee and students on campus.” The committee is comprised entirely of students, who evaluate speakers on their availability, cost, and to avoid topic repetition.

“Anyone can submit speaker names through the Committee’s online nomination form for consideration, and any UW–Madison student can join the WUD DLS Committee,” Shahin continued. “Any registered student organization or University department interested in partnering with the WUD DLS Committee on an event is welcome to contact the Committee.”

A small number of the speakers’ political views could not be definitively determined or were difficult to classify. For example, Michael Shellenberger ran for California governor as a Democrat in 2018 (after his DLS appearance) but has expressed right-leaning views on many topics, and Sister Helen Prejean is a harsh critic of Republican politicians but has publicly written about her opposition to abortion.

Shahin said the DLS committee does not receive student segregated fees or tax dollars and instead relies on Wisconsin Union revenue. In a November interview with the Badger Herald, he clarified that this means “the things you buy at Badger Market and Rathskellar go towards bringing cool people to our campus!” The annual budget for the DLS is approximately $150,000, though it varies slightly.

He said the DLS Committee did not keep track of individuals who had been considered but not ultimately invited, so it is unclear at what rate right-leaning speakers have been nominated. Additionally, “As we do not assign a political viewpoint to speakers and do not choose speakers based on stated or perceived political viewpoints, we do not have available information to verify the political viewpoint data you provided.”

While some of the lecturers did not speak on explicitly political topics, The Federalist classified their views based on public statements they have made. For example, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson discussed scientific issues in his DLS appearances, but was classified as progressive due to his frequent criticisms of conservative politicians. Similarly, astronaut Eileen Collins was classified as conservative due to her public support for Donald Trump. Collins, who discussed space exploration at UW-Madison in 2016, was the most recent openly conservative DLS speaker.

The few conservatives to speak on political topics were former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, political consultant Frank Luntz, author Dinesh D’Souza, and scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Additionally, writer Andrew Sullivan was categorized as conservative because he self-identifies as such, but he has supported Democratic presidential candidates since 2004 and frequently expresses progressive views.

The most recent of these was Ali in 2010. That event was criticized by some as being Islamophobic, audience members yelled “Allahu Akbar,” and extensive security measures forced the start to be delayed by nearly an hour. The DLS chair at the time even admitted the committee initially “decided that we didn’t want our names associated with her.”

In the past twenty years, progressive speakers have included Black Lives Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown, former Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen, Marxist political activist Angela Davis, atheist Richard Dawkins, transgender actor Laverne Cox, “body positivity advocate” Jessamyn Stanley, sex columnist Dan Savage, and more than 185 others.

While the Lecture Series has always skewed progressive, it historically had a better representation of right-leaning speakers. They included William F. Buckley Jr. and Phyllis Schlafly in 1993, (a then-conservative) Bill Kristol in 1999, activists Alan Keyes and David Horowitz in 2001, Ben Stein in 2002, and journalist Robert Novak in 2004.

Schlafly’s event was accompanied by protests. Some DLS events with progressive speakers also had counterdemonstrations. For example, College Republicans protested Michael Moore’s October 2004 lecture, but reportedly had beer and urine poured on them.

Patrick McIlheran, director of policy at the Badger Institute, said the ideological lopsidedness risks “making students feel certain of something that’s untrue.” He told The Federalist, “Universities are schools, so they teach, but they’re more than that: They’re to ‘sift and winnow,’ as the UW-Madison phrase goes – to try to find the flaw in what everyone thinks they’re certain about.” However, “If a school confines such talk to one worldview, how can it know that what it’s preaching to students is right beyond questioning?”

McIlheran also noted that, when right-leaning speakers are so sparse, students have little opportunity to engage with different strands of conservative thought. “There are schisms in conservatism; students should be hearing the views of various factions, on both left and right,” he said. At UW-Madison, it is difficult for students to encounter different strands of conservatism among faculty because the number of right-leaning scholars on campus is so limited.

Ideological lopsidedness is not unique to UW-Madison or new to campus. For example, in the nation’s top 100 universities, Democrats vastly outnumbered Republicans as commencement speakers in 2025. Political donations by UW faculty are similarly skewed to the left. Conservative speakers often face hefty security fees at UW-Madison and elsewhere.

Additionally, according the UW System’s 2023 Freedom of Speech Report, 47.7 percent of Democrat-identifying UW students said controversial speakers should be disinvited “quite a bit or a great deal,” compared to 13.6 percent of Republican students. FIRE’s 2026 free speech data also found that 76 percent of UW-Madison students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking may be at least rarely acceptable, while 35 percent said the same for violence.

“There is no point in anyone’s life after college at which she or he has so much time to listen to compelling speakers and such an easy walk to the auditorium,” McIlheran concluded. “What a monumental waste of Wisconsinites’ intellectual potential if, instead of being exposed to the broad array of American thought, they’re confined to listening to only the little sliver that’s consonant with progressivism’s secular shariah.”