Former UW-Madison Chancellor Donna Shalala announced her candidacy for Congress in a Miami district late Tuesday.
Shalala served as UW-Madison’s chancellor from 1988-’93. She was the first woman to lead a Big Ten school and only the second in the country to head a major research university.
Among Shalala’s major contributions to the university were hiring former football coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez, as well as the adoption of a broad free speech code which subjected students to disciplinary action for any speech regarded as “hate speech.”
The speech policy was eventually abolished after a judge ruled it unconstitutional.
Shalala also supported the passage of a faculty speech code, which contradicts the regents’ current free speech policy prohibiting faculty from engaging in “harmful speech” during both instructional and non-instructional time.
After serving as Chancellor, Shalala moved into the political field as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of Health and Human Services, and later president of the Clinton Foundation.
Shalala will run as a Democrat for a seat in the House of Representatives, which experts say is favored to go to a Democrat this fall.
The seat is currently held by the first Cuban American elected to Congress, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who is retiring after 28 years in Congress.
