One of the bills that I cosigned this year is LB 1064, a bill to eliminate tenure at the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska State College system, and Nebraska’s community colleges. This is a movement which is picking up steam around the country. Several other states have introduced similar legislation including, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas.
While LB 1064 does not strip current faculty members of their tenured status, the bill would prevent future hires from obtaining tenure and it directs the governing boards over our state’s colleges and universities to write and adopt new employment policies which would ultimately promote education and the free expression of ideas. The new employment policies would establish acceptable grounds for the termination of faculty, minimum standards of good practice, standards for discipline, and procedures for dismissal.
It is no secret how some of our nation’s most prestigious universities, such as Harvard University, have had to remove their presidents due the mishandling of antisemitic protests on their campuses and other reasons. Besides allowing unruly antisemitic protests, Harvard University President, Claudine Gay, was accused of 50 counts of plagiarism by the Washington Free Beacon and the NewYork Post. Most recently, Shirley Greene, an administrator for the Harvard Extension School, has been accused of committing 42 instances of plagiarism in her 2008 dissertation. Why do we allow substandard academic scholars to lead our colleges and universities?
