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EDITOR
DougKouma
OPINION
EDITOR
Anne Hjersman
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Doug Peters
Matt Waite
Paula Lavigne
Mitch Sherman
Anthony Nguyen
In the spirit
Joy and merriment
not just for holidays
The holidays are upon us.
Time to dust off the generosity and en
liven the child within.
Time to give freely
and love openly.
Time to breathe
deeply and laugh heart
ily.
Time to slow down
the clock and savor ev
ery taste, touch, sight,
smell and sound of the
season.
Though every day
is not a holiday, there is
always something to
celebrate. This season,
try to live life as you’ve
never lived it before.
Resurrect a family
tradition that has been
lost over the years.
Catch snowflakes
on your tongue.
Build a fort out of
laundry, chairs, snow,
whatever.
Break down the
M-— '
Time to
slow down
the clock
and savor
every taste,
touch,
sight,
smell and
sound of
the
season.”
walls you have built inside yourselt.
Call a friend who hasn’t heard from you
in awhile.
Invite a stranger to lunch.
Bake cookies.
Feed your mind. Read a book.
Offer your coat to someone who is cold.
Trust in someone... anyone... everyone.
Give a friend a bear hug.
Offer more than you can afford to char
ity.
Ride a tncycle — in the snow.
Say “I love you” to a person who has
never heard those words from you but should
have. * .
Leave a snow angel in a friend’s front
yard.
Don’t wait for the mistletoe. Kiss on
impulse.
Light a candle.
Listen.
Sing without inhibition.
Write cards and letters to your loved ones
- —and actually mail them.
Drink hot chocolate with lots of marsh
mallows.
Rpast chestnuts over an open fire.
Dash through the snow.
Go sledding.
Live life unabashed—if even for a mo
ment.
Give thanks. Be meriy. And resolve to
spread the spirit of the holidays over every
day’ of each new year.
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| Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials are the opinions of die
Fall 1996 Daily Nebraskan. They do not nec
essarily reflect die views of die University
of Nebraska-Lincoln, its employees, its stu
dent body or the University of Nebraska
Board of Regents. A column is soley die
opinion of its author. The Board of Regents
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policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Edito
j rial Board. The UNL Publications Board, es
tablished by the regents, supervises the pro
duction of die newspaper. According to
policy .set by the regents, responsibility for
die editorial content .of die newspaper lies
solely in the hands of its student employees.
. :
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Tfenure: Don’t let history repeat itself
Editor's note: This guest column
was submitted by David Moshman,
p rofessorand. chair of education al
psychology «t UNL. Moshman
describes it as “a bit of UNL
history relevant to die current
discussions of tenure.”
UNL faculty hear from many
sources that the tenure system must
be reconsidered. We need to be more
accountable, it is argued, to the
people of Nebraska—who do, after
all, pay our salaries.
Anyone who wonders what
faculty life would be like without
tenure need look no further than the
history of our own university. Prior
to the institution of tenure, faculty
could be—and often were —fired
by die administration of djp Board of
Regents because of their political
views, their educational philosophies,
or their stance on campus issues.
Perhaps the most egregious
violation of academic freedom in
Nebraska history was the extraordi
nary public hearing of 1918. Of the
many people affected by this event,
Harry K. Wolfe is probably the best
known. Many UNL faculty are aware
of Wolfe’s critical early role in
philosophy, psychology and educa
tion at UNL. The tragic end of his
career, however, is a less-told tale.
After receiving his undergraduate
degree from the University of
Nebraska in 1880, Harry Kirke
Wolfe earned a doctorate at the
University of Leipzig (Germany)
under the direction of the renowned
Wilhelm Wundt. Returning to the
University of Nebraska as a profes
sor of philosophy, Wolfe was a
pioneer in the application of psychol
ogy to education long before the
university had either a department of
psychology or a college of education.
In 1895, he was instrumental in
attracting George Washington
Andrew Luckey to come to Nebraska
to found the new department of
pedagogy, the predecessor of what is
now die teachers college. 4
An early proponent of active
learning, critical analysis and lifelong
inquiry, Wolfe encouraged students
to form and justify their own ideas
and highlighted the relevance of the
new science of psychology to issues
of human welfare. Over the course of
his career, he founded one of the first
psychological laboratories in the
United States, actively encouraged
student research, and inspired a
number of undergraduate women
who wait on to earn doctorates and
make major contributions to psychol
ogy and education.
In 1917, after the United States
declared war on Germany, popular
and political pressure was brought to
bear on the University of Nebraska,
as on universities across the country,
to ensure that its faculty were
adequately patriotic and its curricu
lum consistent with the war effort. In
the spring semester of 1918, the
Board of Regents arranged a public
hearing in the law building to
consida charges of “hesitating,
halting and negative support of the
government” against more than a
dozen faculty, including Wolfe and
Luckey, whose loyalty was suspect or
whose courses were not sufficiently
anti-German in ideology.
The hearings lasted two weeks
and generated intense publicity. One
by one, before a panel of Regents
and a large crowd of Nebraska
citizois, the professors faced hostile
questions about their patriotism and
their teaching.
Support was not forthcoming.
Newspapers across the state called
for the university to “clean its
house.” The governor concurred. The
American Association of University
Professors, then in its infancy,
concluded that academic freedom did
not protect the teaching of ideas that
might undermine the war effort. The
ACLU, established in 1920 as a
direct result of the civil liberties
violations of this era, did not yet
exist. Chancellor Samuel Avery
testified that there were indeed
problems with Professor Luckey’s
“attitude.”
At the conclusion of the hearings,
the Regents decided which of the
accused faculty should be asked to
resign. Luckey was among those
whose resignations were demanded.
He received notice of the decision
from a secretary—who handed him
a note during one of his classes—
and resigned four days later.
Wolfe did not lose his job but was
thereafter publicly known as a
teacher whose classes undermined
the patriotic values of Nebraska
youth. Disgraced and humiliated, he
died unexpectedly, apparently of a
heart attack, six weeks after the
verdicts.
In his last published article, which
appeared the month of his death,
Wolfe addressed the relation of
education and individuality. “Soci
ety,” he wrote, “should now be strong
enough to do justice to the individual
and not seek to crucify or to dwarf
him.... There is no institution in
society worth preserving that cannot
withstand all attacks of individual
iconoclasts.”
“Too much obedience,” Wolfe
warned, “may ruin character, may
dwarf the intellect, may paralyse the
will of children and of adults.”
In an age that takes tenure for
granted, one assumes something like
this couldn’t happen here. As calls
for accountability proliferate,
however, we need to remember that it
did happen here, and could happen
again.
