M ore than three months after a small protest at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the incident is stirring political tensions among state lawmakers, university officials, and faculty members.
A graduate student who participated in the protest, in August, was permanently removed from her teaching duties, and two campus communications staff members resigned in protest over the system president’s handling of the situation. Now three state senators are seeking changes that they say are necessary to protect free speech on campus.
State Sen. Steve Erdman is one of the legislators who wrote an opinion piece questioning whether conservative students are treated fairly at the state’s flagship campus. He asked for the dismissal of the graduate student involved in the confrontation and has urged the university to review its policies on free speech. “I’m disappointed that this has been dragging on as long as it has,” Senator Erdman said in an interview.
But many on campus blame the lawmakers for fueling public discord against the university to justify budget cuts to higher education. And they are worried that pressure on the system from elected officials will force university administrators to cave in to demands that will curtail shared governance and academic freedom.
“We fear that financial hostage-taking by members of the state government will result in changes by the administration in the intellectual offerings of the University and opportunities for our students,” said an open letter from the state conference of the American Association of University Professors, which has now been signed by nearly 250 faculty members.
Ronnie D. Green, chancellor of the university, fired back at lawmakers in a letter: “Some faculty have liberal views. Others have conservative views,” he wrote. “To recklessly and falsely accuse the university as a whole of hostility toward a particular view appears to be an attempt to further a political agenda.”
The Dust-Up
What actually happened at the Lincoln campus in late August seems an unlikely catalyst for the harsh rhetoric and hand-wringing. Kaitlyn Mullen, a second-year student, had set up a table to promote the conservative Turning Point USA, which says its mission is to combat liberal bias on college campuses. A university official told Ms. Mullen that she was not in the university’s “free-speech zone” and asked her to move. The university later said that was a mistake and that Ms. Mullen should not have been asked to move.
Then a small group, including Courtney Lawton, a graduate student and lecturer, showed up to protest against Turning Point. Ms. Lawton was caught on video confronting Ms. Mullen with rude gestures and profanity. Another faculty member, Amanda Gailey, an associate professor of English, brought a sign to the protest asking Turning Point to put her on its controversial “Professor Watch List.” The incident was over in a little more than an hour, with no arrests or property damage.
The bottom line is the root cause of the incident last August is a totalitarian philosophy called ‘Social Justice.’
The university investigated, and Ms. Lawton was given an unspecified discipline and removed from her teaching duties for safety reasons, she was told at the time.
But the university’s response was not adequate for Senator Erdman, who initially called for both Ms. Lawton and Ms. Gailey to be fired. The senator said the problem was not the faculty members’ speech but their conduct toward Ms. Mullen.
Since then, the controversy has grown, Mr. Erdman said, because of emails released through an open-records request by the Conservative Review, which produces right-leaning commentary. One of the emails showed a former administrator writing that she didn’t think it was “safe to be conservative” on the campus and that “campuses have to become more tolerant and welcoming to conservative students and faculty.”
Mr. Erdman said he and his colleagues had also heard from constituents about being mistreated on the Lincoln campus by faculty members and shared those emails with Mr. Green and Hank Bounds, the system president, during a November 16 meeting with the administrators.
Mr. Erdman declined, however, to share any of those communications with The Chronicle. “I don’t want to,” he said, adding that he didn’t have the permission of the authors to release the letters and that they might not want their names to be public.
The senators have also zeroed in on statements on the website of the university’s English department, saying that the mission statement focuses too much on politics and social issues and not enough on the basics of writing and composition.
“The bottom line is the root cause of the incident last August is a totalitarian philosophy called ‘Social Justice,’” wrote Sen. Tom Brewer on his legislative blog. “This is now firmly embedded as the philosophy of the English Department at the University,” he added.
While the English department’s mission statement does mention the term “social justice” twice, the first sentence of that document highlights a curriculum that includes “literary and film studies, creative writing, composition and rhetoric and the digital humanities.”
Fighting Back
The senators have gotten an apology, of sorts, and some of their demands met by Mr. Bounds, who said he was “surprised and embarrassed” by some of the emails that were revealed. “Some of the emails reflect unprofessional behavior by our employees and I apologize,” he wrote.
A spokesman for Mr. Bounds referred all questions from The Chronicle to the communications staff at the Lincoln campus.
Mr. Green and faculty members are now trying to counter the negative messages from the senators, who they charge are trying to maximize the political turbulence to undermine faith in the university and pave the way for budget cuts. The senators have also warned that they intend to pursue legislation meant to punish protesters who attempt to shut down controversial speakers on campus.
“This is part of the agenda to discredit higher education, nationally, by questioning the value of a degree and whether public institutions should exist at all,” said Julia Schleck, president of the state conference of the AAUP and an associate professor of English.
The letter from the state’s AAUP chapter also blames Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, and the group School Choice Lincoln, which advocates for charter schools and vouchers for parents to pay private-school tuition.
In a written statement to The Chronicle, Governor Ricketts said university officials are “right to step up their efforts to make sure conservatives feel welcome on campus.”
But he denied any involvement in fueling the controversy: “The lines of attack raised by the faculty association in their letter are baseless.” The governor “respects the role” of the university’s Board of Regents “who are responsible for managing university affairs,” the statement adds.
Deb Portz, a member of School Choice Lincoln, said the group is nonpartisan and not affiliated with the governor. Ms. Portz said the group has not taken a formal stand on the incident at the university. But she added that she knows Ms. Mullen personally from Republican events in the area.
Some group members may have also posted about the incident on social media, said Ms. Portz, who herself has tweeted in support of Turning Point.
Mr. Green was not available for comment, according to his spokeswoman. But the chancellor, who earlier predicted that the reaction to the protest would fade, has now taken a stand against the senators.
“The University will not be politicized and will not be used as a pawn,” he wrote to the lawmakers. “I find your falsehoods and distortions defamatory and an egregious breach of the trust that Nebraskans put in each of us.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
