Dean's Statement to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents

August 13, 2021

Public Comment, Meeting of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents

Members of the Board of Regents:

My name is Mark Button. I am honored to serve as the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln—the largest and most academically diverse college at UNL. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today about a matter of great concern to our faculty, staff, and students. I am here to urge you to vote against the proposed resolution regarding critical race theory.
This resolution is (1) at odds with the University's and the state of Nebraska's goals and interests; (2) it lacks cause and is unnecessary; and (3) it is deeply damaging to the reputation of the University of Nebraska as one of America's great public universities.

1.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska system, and the College of Arts and Sciences at UNL have all recently completed ambitious five-year strategic plans that focus on providing an accessible, affordable, and attainable education to students that will meet the critical workforce needs of the state. Fueling the development and future economic growth of the state of Nebraska requires that we remain competitive in attracting students, faculty, and staff from within and increasingly from outside of the state and the country.

If adopted, this resolution will have an immediate and chilling effect on our institution's ability to confront and help address ongoing challenges in relation to race, discrimination, and racial inequality. Since these issues are manifested in a variety of different domains—from the criminal justice system, to education, health care, and the environment—this resolution will have a direct and negative impact on the ability of our faculty and staff to design and offer courses and programs that remain current with developments in their fields and in our world.

The direct consequence is a loss of competitiveness in recruiting and retaining highly talented people to the state of Nebraska. Indeed, I have received recent reports from program leaders that we now have several tenured and untenured faculty members of color who have quietly begun looking for positions at other universities. As one faculty member in our college recently asked me: "If some of the very people entrusted with steering the university, the Regents, are hostile to approaches that analyze and illuminate the past and present racist injustices that have oppressed my community, how welcome am I, really?"

This type of self-inflicted loss of competitiveness will hamper the great strides we are already making on our path to make the University of Nebraska unparalleled among public research universities.

2.

The resolution declaring an opposition to critical race theory "being imposed in curriculum, training, and programming" is an unnecessary intervention into curricular and programming decisions that are properly delegated to the professional staff employed by the Board of Regents. The resolution is unnecessary because there exists no imposition of, or requirement pertaining to, critical race theory in the curriculum of the College of Arts and Sciences. Indeed, I am not aware of any imposition or obligation related to critical race theory anywhere in the curriculum at UNL. At a great university like ours, we don't impose ideas or theories, we assign them in order critically evaluate, discuss, and debate them.

In support the free and open pursuit of diverse ideas, we have robust policies and practices at the University of Nebraska to support and defend the right of teachers and learners to explore and to share the results of their inquiries with one another. As the Board of Regents Bylaws make clear, Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility are crucially bound together. Intellectual freedoms of teaching, expression, research, and debate depend upon respecting the right of others to express differing opinions. Being a member of the professional staff at the University of Nebraska entails the professional obligation to establish and maintain a classroom that encourages free inquiry, free expression, and an atmosphere of intellectual honesty. Additionally, we have standing policies against discrimination of any kind. It is a core responsibility of the faculty and administrators to enroll, teach, and evaluate the work of students without regard to considerations such as age, sex, race, color, national origin, or religious or political beliefs.

Even if the two claims asserted about critical race theory were true—that "critical race theory does not promote inclusive and honest dialogue"; and proponents of this theory "seek to silence opposing views and disparage American ideals"—the correlative rights and responsibilities of faculty and students at the University of Nebraska ensure that the free, robust, and respectful exchange of ideas on our campuses is jealously protected. However, the first claim is a fallacy; as a trained political theorist, I can tell you that a theory does not do anything; only human beings—interpreting and enacting the principles and values of a theory—have agency. If we really believed that any theory that purportedly runs counter to American ideals or constitutional principles constituted a real and tangible threat to open, inclusive, and honest dialogue, our students would not be exposed to a wide range of influential political theories that define the ideological and cultural contours of our world. This is certainly not consistent with the values of education, free speech, and sound learning that we champion at the University of Nebraska.

3.

An unnecessary resolution that seeks to address a "problem" that does not exist is, nonetheless, deeply damaging to the well-earned reputation of the University of Nebraska as one of America's great public universities. If adopted, this resolution could be interpreted as imposing a prior restraint on the faculty and their professional determinations of the relevant content of their courses and programs. This is a clear violation of academic freedom and with it the intellectual integrity of our university. This is something that a great public university cannot tolerate, for it would mean allowing the critics of a theory to enshrine their disagreements into a formal, institutional expression of opposition to that theory through its governing board. In a free society, the legitimate place for disagreements about any theory is in the public sphere—most especially our public universities.

I urge the Members of the Board to reject this resolution. Doing so will enable us to act in concert to advance the University and state of Nebraska's interests and goals and it will sustain the well-earned reputation of the University of Nebraska as one of our country's outstanding public research universities.