I wonder if State Senator Loren Lippincott of Central City was ever taught the definition of irony.

You see the Senator and 11 of his fellow senators have proposed a bill that would eliminate tenure at the University of Nebraska. He thinks that professors should be fired if they push their “woke ideology” on the students. Evidently, he doesn’t want the professional teachers at the University to be promoting ideas that he doesn’t like. He wants the teachers to be promoting a conservative ideology that he does approve.

In other words, fire the liberals who are forcing their views on students and reward the conservatives who are forcing their ideas on the students with long term contracts that have the same effect as tenure.

Isn’t that ironic? Don’t you think?

College is where some students go to learn about the laws of physics. They study Copernican heliocentrism, which is the revolutionary idea that the earth revolves around the sun. But when Galileo first proposed that theory in the early 1600’s, it upset the Pope and the powers that be so much that he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. I guess that was the penalty for being too “woke” in the 17th century.

College is where other students go to learn about history. And they’ll see that history repeats itself. It wasn’t just Galileo that suffered the consequences of teaching an unpopular fact, but more recently Albert Einstein did as well. As a German Physicist with pacifist beliefs, he was in California when Hitler came into power. He was refused entry back into his home country and his books and teachings were burned.

America welcomed Einstein and used his teachings as a foundation to develop the atomic bomb. A Pacifist helped develop one of the deadliest weapons known to man. That too seems very ironic.

Maybe those State Senators who think getting rid of tenure is a good idea were never taught what going to college was really about.

Sure, you go to a University to get an education that will hopefully propel you to a rewarding high paying career, but going to a University is so much more than that.

It’s about the exchange of ideas. It’s about meeting people that are different than you. It’s about learning about life. It’s where a young man or woman goes to find themselves.

There seems to be a growing trend in America of people that are afraid of education. That if you trust a person like Dr. Fauchi — who has spent his entire life studying infectious diseases — you must be some sort of elitist. Or anti-vaxxers who refuse to acknowledge the advances of modern medicine and the rigors pharmaceutical companies have to go through to get their medicine approved.

It seems ridiculous but there are still a number of people who believe the earth is flat. Should a tenured professor lose their job for teaching that the earth is round?

It’s been a long time since I was a student at UNO, but I do recall some professors that proposed ideas that I found to be far-fetched. I wasn’t threatened by them.  I didn’t automatically agree with them. I listened to them, considered their ideas, and either embraced or dismissed them based on the personal beliefs and ideologies I had already formed. I figured the exchange of ideas was all part of the college experience. The exchange of ideas should be a part of everyone’s life experience.

After 350 years the Catholic church admitted that Galileo was right, and the church was wrong. Of course, scientists, astronomers and scholars around the world realized Galileo was right way before that. I hope it doesn’t take 350 years for Senator Lippincott and his fellow senators to realize how wrong this proposal is.

History does repeat itself and every year about this time bad ideas are proposed in the Unicameral. As a citizen of Nebraska, I hate it when a State Senator proposes such a bad idea. However, I have to admit, as a person who has made a career commenting on these bad ideas … I love it.

Isn’t that ironic?

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.