MADISON — During an opening ceremony, Gov. Jim Doyle praised the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery as the culmination of UW-Madison’s long traditions of interdisciplinary research, scientific breakthroughs and generous philanthropy.
“This corner … will now be a center for the world for generations to come,” Doyle said at the grand opening of the new research facility on the west side of the Madison campus. “It is part of an incredible acceleration of the kind of interdisciplinary work that has gone on on this campus for a long time.”
Doyle said Thursday he’s particularly proud of the state’s involvement in the facility, adding that politics and religious views could have gotten in the way of science during the three-year, $375 million process of building the institutes.
UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin said she hopes the facility emboldens students and the community at large to utilize its potential, noting its scientific breakthroughs will also have strong “humanistic and social services aspects.”
“I hope it will serve every conceivable purpose for every possible constituency,” Martin said.
John Morgridge, the former head of Cisco Systems who, together with wife Tashia, donated $50 million toward the project, echoed those sentiments, calling the facility “a trading center of ideas.”
Noting the project was opened three years after breaking ground, Morgridge — a UW alum who now lives in California — joked that he likes bringing ideas to Wisconsin because, “You can have the vision and, before you die, actually get things done.”
Union activists, angry over the private contracting of food service at the institutes, twice interrupted the ceremony with protest chants.
“The attempt to privatize these jobs is a blatant attempt to weaken AFSCME 171 as a whole and to move the entire university toward a privatized workforce,” according to a statement from the Student Labor Action Coalition.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the private group that owns 70 percent of the WID, defended its selection of Food Fight Restaurant Group, saying collective bargaining discussions with university workers broke down and that no government jobs are being privatized.
— By WisBusiness Staff
