The bill elaborates on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill provision — since removed by the Joint Finance Committee — calling on UW to codify its commitment to free expression.

That statement of commitment by the UW Board of Regents reads in part: “Each institution in the University of Wisconsin System has a solemn responsibility not only to promote lively and fearless exploration, deliberation, and debate of ideas, but also to protect those freedoms when others attempt to restrict them. Exploration, deliberation, and debate may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community (or those outside the community) to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”

Walker sounded some similar themes in his comments in support of Kremer's bill Sunday on “Upfront with Mike Gousha."

"To me, a university should be precisely the spot where you have an open and free dialogue about all different positions," Walker said. "But the minute you shut down a speaker, no matter whether they are liberal or conservative or somewhere in between, I just think that's wrong."

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