Last June UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin received $150,000 just for hanging around. She was scheduled to get another $250,000 had she stayed into June of this year, but instead she’s leaving for Columbia University. Her last day at the UW will be sometime around commencement in May.
By most accounts Mnookin did a good job. Enrollment, fundraising and state government financial support are up. The Madison campus has returned to the top five universities for research grants — at least before Donald Trump’s war on science turned all that upside down.
And she found a way to navigate a hostile Republican Legislature. When she made her announcement, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had warm words for her and wished her well in her new post. Related to that, and something that didn’t go unnoticed at Columbia, she handled the protests following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent campus protests against the Israeli response more effectively than chancellors at a lot of other places…