These experts from the UW–Madison faculty and staff have agreed to comment on breaking news, ongoing developments and trends in their areas of expertise. If you need help arranging interviews, email the Office of Strategic Communication.
Experts on the news
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Jirs Meuris on: The Organizational Fallout of Government Shutdowns
Government shutdowns create deep and lasting disruptions across the public workforce and the institutions that depend on it. Jirs Meuris, Associate Professor of Management and Human Resources at the Wisconsin School of Business, studies how financial stress and institutional uncertainty influence employee motivation, trust, and long-term organizational stability. He emphasizes that shutdowns often trigger an exodus of skilled workers seeking reliability elsewhere, producing ripple effects that extend far beyond the shutdown period and weaken the public sector’s ability to recruit, retain, and perform effectively.
He can speak to:
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How repeated shutdowns undermine public sector workforce retention by eroding employees’ sense of financial security and organizational commitment.
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Uncertainty during shutdowns weakening trust in government agencies and lowering overall performance, even after normal operations resume.
Past Press:
The Atlantic- January 2019
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John Hall on: Illinois and Oregon Intensify Efforts to Block Trump’s Guard Deployments
Hall, a historian of U.S. defense policy and civil-military relations, can discuss the significance of this moment. He notes that such overt politicization of the armed forces raises serious questions about the balance of civilian control and military neutrality. “The U.S. military has prided itself on being apolitical, subordinated to elected leaders but not instrumentalized for partisan ends,” Hall recently explained. “Events like this are telling indicators of stress in civil-military relations."
He can speak to:
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The “rebranding” of the Department of Defense as the Department of War, the probable aims of this unprecedented gathering of military leaders, and the likely results.
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The President’s remarks about using American cities as training grounds, and how they gesture to a more fundamental challenge to longstanding policies which have sought to avoid domestic deployments and collisions with popular sentiment.
Recent Press:
The New York Times- September 2025
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