Nebraska Should Follow Through

In August 2017, a professor and a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln protested students who were recruiting for the conservative student organization Turning Point USA. A video showed the teaching assistant holding a sign saying “Just Say No! to Neo-Fascism” while flipping the bird and using derogatory language at the students in question. This resulted in three members of the Nebraska state legislature writing an op-ed questioning if there was a hostile environment on campus toward conservative students. A war of words ensued between the legislators and the campus chancellor in Lincoln. Although the chancellor tried to assure the legislators and the residents of Nebraska that conservatives were indeed a welcome and important part of the campus community, these efforts were not entirely successful.

The mismatch between the political affiliations of faculty and the majority of Nebraska’s residents is an ongoing source of conflict. Fast-forward to 2024, and Nebraska state legislator Loren Lippincott introduced a bill to end tenure at state-sponsored colleges and universities. As justifications for the bill, he cited a lack of accountability among poor-performing tenured professors, professors pushing woke ideology, and professors using their positions to limit free speech. Lippincott was quoted as saying, “As tax-paying citizens, we have a right to expect that our tax dollars will be used to educate and edify our students, not indoctrinate them with leftist ideology.” The bill to end tenure was sponsored by 11 out of 49 members of the Nebraska unicameral legislature. Although unsuccessful in 2024, it was reintroduced in 2025.

The conflict is exacerbated by media reports of rampant leftism on college campuses. These two examples illustrate an ongoing level of political discord between liberal faculty members in the Nebraska University (NU) system and the predominantly conservative residents of the state.

Republicans outnumber Democrats two-to-one among registered voters in Nebraska. The purportedly nonpartisan Nebraska state unicameral legislature has 49 members, 33 of whom are Republicans. Furthermore, all of Nebraska’s major state-government positions are held by Republicans, as are both of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate and all three of its seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In contrast, Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven-to-one among faculty members at Nebraska’s publicly funded universities. This mismatch between the political affiliations of university faculty members and the majority of the state’s residents and elected leaders is an ongoing source of conflict in Nebraska. The conflict is exacerbated by media reports of rampant leftism on college campuses, even when the reports are not about events on any of the four NU system campuses.

Due to the well-known history of liberal faculty in higher education, it has been pragmatically accepted for years by conservatives and Christians that they will have their religious and political values challenged if they choose to pursue a state-college degree. However, as in many other predominantly conservative states, legislators in Nebraska are beginning to push back on leftist activism and liberal indoctrination in higher education. In addition to the bills mentioned above to eliminate tenure, every year for the past five years the governor and legislature in Nebraska have reduced funding for the NU system, to the tune of $100 million dollars.

In order to meet these reductions in funding, academic programs have been cut, and faculty positions have been permanently eliminated from the NU system. While the overall state economy unquestionably influences public funding for higher education, it is not necessary to be an astute political scientist to discern that radical liberal behavior on college campuses in a predominantly conservative state does not endear higher education to those who control the funding.

Nowhere is the dispute between conservatives and liberals in higher education more evident than in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives on campuses. DEI is a sacred cow of higher education for many liberals as part of their relentless pursuit of social justice, with concepts such as “white privilege,” “Western imperialism,” and “heteronormative toxicity” often being taught as part of DEI instruction in the humanities and social sciences. However, conservatives often view DEI as racist, divisive, and exclusionary.

Much has already been written about DEI and its anti-American and anti-meritocratic principles (including this piece from a Nebraska education reformer that compares DEI to a zombie apocalypse). To push back against rampant leftism on college campuses, conservative legislators in Nebraska have advocated for the dismantling of DEI in publicly funded higher education. While some universities in Nebraska have dismantled their DEI offices even without a legislative mandate, DEI offices may also have simply been renamed without changing their actual mission. However, President Trump’s January 20, 2025, executive order to dismantle DEI programs is quite thorough in its efforts to end DEI initiatives, no matter how they are branded.

While some Nebraska universities have dismantled their DEI offices, such units may also have simply been renamed. On February 15, 2025, in compliance with Pres. Trump’s executive order, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to higher-education institutions that receive federal funding, with instructions that they must stop using race as part of the decision process “in their admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, sanctions, discipline, and beyond.” These instructions describe a broadly sweeping policy to eliminate DEI from higher education, no matter how it is named. In response, the president of the NU system sent an email to all employees explaining that each campus’s chancellor will review his or her respective campus to ensure compliance with the “Dear Colleague” letter. However, lawsuits fighting Pres. Trump’s executive order have already started. They will probably take years to resolve, and the bills by Nebraska legislators to eliminate DEI in state-sponsored higher education have not been passed. It will take a long time to know if campus DEI initiatives have gone the way of the dodo or instead have just morphed into something with a different name but the same function.

Bills by Nebraska legislators to eliminate DEI in state-sponsored higher education have not been passed. One final challenge facing education at all levels in Nebraska is the presence of teachers’ unions, including the National Education Association and its subsidiary the Nebraska State Education Association (NSEA). In the past few years, these unions and parents’ groups have been diametrically opposed over what should be taught in schools and the role of parents in the education of children. As a result, legislation has been introduced in Nebraska to break the monopoly the existing unions have on teachers by allowing other professional organizations the same access to educators.

While the disagreement between parents and the teachers’ unions has focused on K-12 education, passage of this bill will likely have collateral effects on unions in higher education, because unions represent the faculty at two out of the four universities in the NU system. Whether legislation to weaken the hold of existing teachers’ unions on educators will pass and how this will affect the faculty unions in the NU system is hard to predict.

In conclusion, as in much of the country, higher education in Nebraska faces challenges. Public support for state-sponsored institutions of higher education is falling both in terms of financial support and approval ratings. The value of higher education is increasingly being questioned by the public and legislators who control the purse strings for publicly funded higher education. However, the people of Nebraska understand that higher education is necessary to ensure that there are future professionals in fields such as healthcare, science, technology, business, and so on.

To win back public trust and support, those in higher education need to clearly demonstrate that academic freedom protects the rights of conservatives and liberals alike. To do this, colleges and universities must ensure that admissions, scholarships, awards, faculty positions, and so forth are awarded based on merit, not because of checked DEI boxes.

Furthermore, those in higher education need to do more to show conservatives that going to college will not result in leftist indoctrination. One way to do this is for colleges and universities to more publicly welcome conservatives and Christians as valued faculty and student-body members. When conservative faculty members and students are more visible in the campus community and the public square in defense of conservative values, Nebraskans will see a higher-education system they can support.

Gregory A. Brown is professor of exercise science in the physical activity and wellness laboratory of the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Sciences at the University of Nebraska Kearney.