Editor's Note (10/28/08)
| Published Oct 28, 2008
--UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman, State of the University Address, 2008
Nebraska hasn’t always been this way; in fact, our history suggests that our early pioneer mentality was about as open and free flowing as our geography.
Staking his claim in 1863, Daniel Freeman posted the first entry under the national Homestead Act near Beatrice in Nebraska territory.
A pioneer of more than geography, Freeman filed suit in one of the first church v. state trials in the nation nearly three decades later, alleging the use of the Bible as a textbook in his children’s schoolhouse violated Nebraska’s constitution.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in favor of Freeman in 1902, 23 years before the Scopes Monkey trial hit the national scene.
Although it failed to ratify until the passing of the national amendment in 1920, women’s suffrage in Nebraska had been an issue since the state’s territorial days and passionately resurfaced in the 1870s alongside several other visionary Great Plains states.
In 1934, fed up with partisan politics and wasted budgets, progressive Nebraska Sen. George Norris campaigned for an amendment to the state constitution to provide for a one-house legislature based on the Australian parliament of Queensland.
The amendment passed, and Nebraska remains to this day the only state with a unicameral legislature.
With its vision firmly pointed toward the future, Nebraska was once an extremely progressive state, both politically and socially. Unfortunately, the current trend is heading in the opposite direction.
Nebraska now readily accepts isolation, shielding itself from different and unpopular ideas and muffling its own attempts to follow in our progressive predecessors’ footsteps.
As UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman stated in his 2008 State of the University Address, “This is no time to squint, no time to look back, no time to be content with the nostalgia of what we had or to be paralyzed by the fear of what we might become.”
I am, of course, referring to the recent denunciation by many of Nebraska’s public officials of the now-canceled William Ayers speaking engagement to be hosted by UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences.
The CEHS officially stated “safety reasons” for the cancelation, and perhaps that played into the final decision. But one would be painfully naïve to believe our politicians’ criticisms and the criticisms of their constituents were not the primary deal breaker.
Our state’s fear of a deteriorating reputation steals our academic opportunities, and our politics inhibit our edification.
Gov. Dave Heineman declared Ayers’ invitation to UNL both “an embarrassment to the state” and “beyond the bounds of the university’s mission,” according to the Omaha World-Herald. An embarrassment to whom?
The governor’s narrow-minded political supporters? The UNL alumni threatening to cut donations if supposedly “radical” ideas are allowed to cross the Nebraska borders?
If the governor’s statements don’t disturb you, they should. For a university and a public that wishes to continue in its tradition of pioneering new fields, new discussions and new ways of living, we must not allow our representatives to publicly undermine the objective of education.
We live in an age of insecurity, driven primarily by ignorance. We have become paralyzed by the fear of what we might become.
Listening to our state politicians denounce UNL’s invitation to William Ayers on the basis of patriotism and principles, I, too, fear what we might become.
And if we, as citizens, continue to sanction and foster this mentality in our state government, the blame falls on all of us.
Respectfully-er,
Carson Vaughan
Editor In Chief
Dailyer Nebraskan
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