Chancellor Mnookin Discusses Pluralism, Wisconsin Exchange in Exclusive Interview

Mnookin believes increased dialogue across differences can solve many problems on campus

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin sat down with The Madison Federalist for a wide-ranging sit-down interview on Thursday, November 5th. She discussed topics including the Wisconsin Exchange, intellectual diversity on campus, and the performance of the Badgers football team.

THE WISCONSIN EXCHANGE

The Wisconsin Exchange, a campus-wide initiative to increase dialogue across viewpoints on campus, was announced in late October. “I’m excited about the Wisconsin Exchange and what I hope it will generate,” Mnookin said. “I think it’s extremely important for students, staff, and faculty to have the opportunity to talk to and learn from people who don’t think the way they do, whether that’s a matter of their identity, their background, or their viewpoint and political differences.”

Mnookin said she strongly believes “that you don’t have to agree with somebody about everything to work with them constructively on something. Not everyone in our broader community shares that view, but I think it’s a really important perspective.”

Through the Exchange, “We will be having talks and lectures, and some of those may take the form of debates, but some of them won’t. It doesn’t always have to be many views at the same time. We will be growing different kinds of opportunities, including a seed grant program where students, staff, or faculty can submit their own ideas.”

“I also am excited we’re going to be partnering with the Reagan Institute on a Common Ground Forum this spring that will bring, hopefully, well-known, high-level individuals with different views together to have that conversation.”

While most of the already-announced Exchange programs are focused outside of the classroom, Mnookin said she hopes “there will be curricular dimensions as well.” She said, “Some of the faculty on the steering committee already have ideas for courses that they want to develop. Several of our deans are excited and engaged by that as well.” In addition to courses, she said there has been discussion of a first-year interest group in this space. “But as Chancellor, I don’t wave a magic wand and directly impact the curriculum,” Mnookin told the Federalist.

“We’re going to create a postdoc program, where postdocs, in a variety of fields, who have an interest in pluralism and engaging across difference, can be something of a cohort. And there’s a set of faculty, including some who are on the initial steering committee, and others who also have a significant interest in the curricular dimensions of this.”

INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY

Mnookin told the Federalist, “I think that the critiques of universities, including ours, for not embracing pluralism have more than a grain of truth. And, I think, sometimes, the critics of our universities overstate by anecdote.”

At UW-Madison, over 99 percent of political donations by faculty go to Democratic candidates or left-leaning groups. Republicans in the legislature have frequently criticized the UW System for the shortage of openly conservative faculty members.

Mnookin believes “there is some legitimacy” to the belief “that universities in general, including UW-Madison, have, in some areas, a political slant.” She said that, since the 1960s, “the kinds of funnelling into academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences, compared to other areas, there was a reduced degree of political diversity.”

“I don’t think we should want any intellectual space to be a monoculture or not have vibrant forms of exchange, including across differences. It does get complicated in expert settings, because there are sometimes perspectives and views that are seen to be outside the range of legitimate expert voice. So, you know, you’re not necessarily gonna have a flat earth person or somebody who doesn’t believe in the germ theory, right?”

Mnookin said, “Decisions about faculty hiring and faculty success are owned by faculty processes, and there’s a lot of good reasons for that, because faculties are experts.” However, “It can also create the risk of creating monocultures, or insufficient engagement across differences.”

The Chancellor believes that “part of our responsibility, as a place that wants to be intellectually serious about what we’re doing, is always to ask whose voices aren’t being included, and are there mechanisms by which we could bring excellent scholars, who brought in the range of perspectives, to our environment?”

As part of a 2023 deal with the state legislature, UW-Madison agreed to “seek philanthropic support to create an endowed chair to focus on conservative political thought, classical economic theory, or classical liberalism, depending on the donor’s interest” and conduct “a national search to fill the position.”

Mnookin said that neither the political science department nor the La Follette School of Public Affairs have “a brand new chair in this space,” but they are “asking the question about viewpoint diversity.” Mnookin told the Federalist, “The commitment was to seek to raise funds for an endowed chair. While we’ve raised money for a lot of things, we haven’t had somebody raise their hand and say that they want to make a gift specifically to that endowed chair.”

CIVICS EDUCATION SCHOOL

Many flagship state universities, such as the University of Texas at Austin, the Ohio State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have launched civics education schools to increase intellectual diversity on their campuses in recent years. They are independent divisions that often have their own budgets, faculty, curricula, and tenure tracks. Former UW-Madison political science professors Ryan Owens and Richard Avramenko run the civics schools at Florida State University and Arizona State University, respectively.

Mnookin is skeptical, however, that the model would be a good fit for UW-Madison. “I believe that a robust intellectual culture is probably best achieved by creating spaces where people are engaging with each other, not moving back to separate bubbles,” she said.

“I think there’s pros and cons to every model in this area. Several of those schools were prompted by legislative fiat and imposed on the university. As a general rule, I’m not a huge fan of legislatures trying to make determinations about school content and offerings, and in several of those schools, it’s also created some pretty messy dynamics.”

She told the Federalist, “Several others of them seem to be off to a good start, so I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here. I think, here in our purple state with a Republican-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor, we would probably be unlikely to see that kind of proposal make its way through the legislature and be signed by the governor.” Mnookin hopes “that institutions would embrace the importance of not being monocultures without it necessarily having to be forced upon them.”

FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS

Chancellor Mnookin discussed various aspects of the 2026 Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression free speech rankings, including the 126-spot improvement over the previous year’s list. In addition to adopting institutional neutrality, “We have tried to clarify our approach to free speech. We’ve also created free speech modules, which every incoming student needs to watch. FIRE actually was a partner in creating some of those modules.”

UW-Madison was given an “F” score in FIRE’s latest analysis, though Mnookin downplayed that grade, as roughly two-thirds of all universities ranked by FIRE earned an “F.” Mnookin said, “It’s very important to me that we have a robust, free speech environment on campus.”

She said, “I appreciate that FIRE has been pretty ideologically consistent in their commitment to free speech, and so they’ve called out and criticised both threats to free speech coming from the left as well as the right.” However, “I don’t love their rankings approach. I think that, like many systems of rankings, there’s some aspects to it that one could critique.”

Mnookin specifically criticized how the organization categorizes deplatformings, taking issue with FIRE penalizing UW-Madison for disruptions in an event with former UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Mnookin said, “We were concerned that there might be a disruption. [Thomas-Greenfield] said, ‘If there is, I’d like to engage first.’ There was a disruption, she engaged, those individuals were asked to leave and did, and she was able to share her perspective.”

She continued, “The particular individuals involved happened not even to be members of our community. So, from my perspective, that was actually a pretty successful event. And yet, we got dinged.”

“There’s aspects of the rankings that I would take issue with, but I appreciate their role as free speech examiner, and even watchdog, across our universities.” Mnookin noted that Greg Lukianoff, the CEO of FIRE, is coming to UW-Madison as part of the Wisconsin Exchange speaker series in March of next year.

ADMISSIONS

The Chancellor also responded to a report by Do No Harm that found racial disparities in admissions to the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. In the 2024 admissions cycle, a Black applicant was nearly ten times more likely to be admitted than a White or Asian student with an identical GPA and MCAT score. Just 2.4 percent of Asian applicants were admitted, compared to 14.9 percent of Black applicants. The average MCAT score of rejected Asian applicants was higher than that of accepted Black applicants.

“It’s very important, I think, SMPH takes seriously any critique of its admissions process.” She continued, “Since the Students for Fair Admissions ruling by the court, the university has reviewed and revised admissions policies in accordance with the guidelines, and we certainly expect all of our schools, including SMPH, to abide by the legal standards not to consider race directly in the course of their admissions.”

Mnookin told the Federalist, “I know this is something that the new dean of the medical school is paying close attention to and assessing.”

FOOTBALL

Shortly before the Federalist’s interview with Mnookin, athletic director Chris McIntosh announced that football coach Luke Fickell will stay at Wisconsin for the 2026 season, despite the poor performance of the Badgers football team. “There’s no question that this season has been very disappointing and frustrating to students, fans, players, legislators, chancellors, everybody,” Mnookin said. “But at the same time, I have a lot of confidence that [McIntosh] has a strong plan that will help us, that we’ll be able to execute on, and turn this around.”

THE BAR RAIDS

The Chancellor believes her job “is a little bit more like being mayor than CEO.” As the leader of “a big, decentralised institution where there’s a huge amount going on, I certainly don’t know everything that’s going on in our institution, nor do I have direct power and people over it. At the same time, it’s a huge privilege of honour to get to help lead this extraordinary research university.”

She said, “I’m amused sometimes at things that people think that I’m behind or have power over.” For example, “I am aware that there are students who think that I’m behind the bar raids. I really have no control over the over Madison Police, nor have I ever asked them to do or not to do such a thing! But I’m aware that many students think otherwise.”

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Chancellor Mnookin told the Federalist, “I always enjoy the time I get to spend with students. We have more than 50,000 students, and there’s only one of me. So I don’t get to be at as many student events as I would like, but I appreciate enormously how many people of this institution care about it, and from their different perspectives and points of view, try to make it better.”

“I think universities will be at their best when they are welcoming places for engagement, for people from all backgrounds, all identities, and a large variety of points of view. And I do think we have continued work to do to get there, but I think there’s a lot of people across the political spectrum who believe that that’s important, and want to be part of that work.”