Back to school season comes with emotion. I recently saw a high school cross country team out on summer run, and my memory whisked me back 25 years to pre-season practices with my high school field hockey team. I still feel similar anxious and excited nerves as a middle-aged faculty member. However, I approach the new academic year with trepidation after everything we went through as a campus last year. For my own sake, I wanted to recap what’s happened since the December 5, 2025 Board of Regents meeting – which resulted in the crushing elimination of four departments and 50+ faculty positions. It helped me to organize this coherently and chronologically. Maybe it helps you approach the new year too.
What in the world happened since December 5, 2025
By December 31, the National AAUP leadership sent a letter to President with their concerns about the departmental eliminations. We are grateful to their support over the most recent months to engage in discussions with us and administrators about extending and saving jobs.
In what seems like a distant memory, on Monday January 5th, we received news that Chancellor Rodney Bennett was resigning, effective the first day of the spring semester, January 12th. It was later reported that he left with a $1.1 million buyout on his contract. Former Executive Vice Chancellor Katherine Ankerson was quickly named interim Chancellor.
Within a week, Chancellor Ankerson and President Gold held a listening session where they listened respectfully to those in attendance, many of whom expressed their deep concerns and distrust, including requests to reinstate eliminated faculty. During the session, they committed to reviewing the budget cut process, with President Gold admitting his trust in the UNL process and leadership was violated. But, barely 24 hours, the campus community received a note that there were not going to be any changes.
In late January, 50+ faculty received their official termination letters.
The “Bold Path Forward” strategic planning process was launched in February with listening sessions held throughout the spring semester. According to administrators, the goal was to bring a strategic plan for UNL forward and in line with President Gold’s Odyssey to Extraordinary plan for the University of Nebraska System. In late spring, emerging themes were released that suggested administrators might be capturing some of the morale and support issues that were expressed at listening sessions and via submitted comment. The plan is expected to be released ahead of or during the beginning of this academic year.
In March, Chancellor Ankerson, President Gold, and other administrators met with a group of faculty organized by our chapter. Again, they listened respectfully. They told us they know morale is terrible on campus. They alluded to future budget cuts. And, they did admit 0% salary increases are unsustainable. And, coming into the new academic year, faculty and staff received small salary increases (to be sure, they do not even cover the cost of inflation in recent years).
Throughout spring, and without input, as far as could be seen by most, administrators quietly deleted pronouns from Canvas, removed diversity related websites, and closed the Gender and Sexuality Center. The Center was a beacon of support for so many students over decades. For queer and allied members of the campus community, these actions represent not only pre-compliance with hostile electeds, but purposeful acts of harm.
In April and May, the College of Arts and Sciences Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech Committee dispersed a survey and released results from 130 faculty responses. Their results are worth reading if you have not. Faculty are not confident in university and system leadership commitment to shared governance. Some feel pressure to change content of their courses, as one important finding. These sentiments feel emblematic of what we hear from many faculty across campus.
In June, Faculty in eliminated departments filed an official grievance with the Academic Rights and Responsibilities Committee. They await the investigation and report from the convened faculty committee to hear the case.
In early July, President Gold announced he was abiding Governor Pillen’s request for state agencies to reduce budgets by 5% (something he does not have the authority to do). Within mere days, we heard from Interim Chancellor Ankerson that this $14 million cut would be erased quickly, by deferring equipment and technology maintenance. That is somewhat of a relief that this will not result in loss of personnel. But, I cannot imagine how that feels for the 50+ faculty served termination letters who all came with proposals to save money that could have also saved their jobs. We were told in no uncertain terms at the now infamous December 5th Board of Regents meeting that the approximately $7 million cut was urgent and could not wait for alternate plans to be discussed.
AND, before we knew it, by late July, we received the news that Deloitte is coming to town, apparently having signed a contract with the University system this spring to “conduct a system-wide financial sustainability analysis”. This is very foreboding. We are working on sharing more information about what has happened when Deloitte comes to other campuses.
Many of our chapter’s active members have left for new jobs, and we wish them all the very best! Sarah Zucerkman, our past chapter President, left several posts explaining what she went through personally and professionally which are worth your time to read! As an education scholar she had unique insight into the attacks we are witnessing on public education at all levels.
So much more has happened too: the mystifying board shake up, and then buyout orchestrated by the Board of Regents to take over Nebraska Medicine, and major upgrades are coming to the football stadium. The pace and scale of such news is disorienting. Not to mention, it all feels incongruent to me as a faculty member living in fear of not having enough grant or discretionary funds to replace an aging work computer.
Where are we now?
There are several other realities facing our campus community as we head into the new school year.
Faculty wages have stagnated in real dollars while administrative salaries increase. See here, here, and here for more context on this trend.
We should not forget that the decisions made last year went against faculty shared governance recommendations (from the Faculty Senate, Graduate Council, the APC), and every single one of the five plus hours of speakers at the Board of Regents meetings when the votes took place on December 5, which you can still watch on YouTube! I feel especially frustrated that so many spent so much time submitting comments, going to meetings, and trying to warn our administrators about the real and reputational harm that would be done, only to have the plan march forward.
I am still unaware of concrete teach-out plans for the departments we lost. Across the university this has ramifications for us all. For me as a research faculty, from a statistics point of view, this is very concerning for new and future graduate students. We don’t know who is reaching our core courses and when.
Our colleagues are leaving in droves. As a chapter, we are working to count and understand the fallout, not only of VSIPs and departmental eliminations, but also those who have chosen to leave. It’s a huge brain drain, again with ramifications for all of us remaining. Help us inventory the losses with this quick survey.
Having spent time with faculty who were eliminated or in the affected departments, it’s been a life altering, traumatic, confusing and unjust situation. Their personal and professional lives are completely upended. Last year’s cuts were a huge loss of experience and talent in unique areas of importance for the state. A few who have kept jobs feel survivor’s guilt. Some have health issues. The process for some having contracts extended short term is best described from those going through it as haphazard. See our post about the incoherence of eliminating some but not all in EAS. And, others are dealing with the departmental mergers, which is a huge time and energy distraction from scholarship and teaching. See our post about this from April.
We should expect a Chancellor search this fall.
Finally, at the August Board of Regents (tomorrow, August 13!), lots of activity is already underway. The Regents are not only proposing to eliminate several majors at UNL, but also to create a new degree program at UNO in Statistics and Operations Research. This is very curious because we have been told repeatedly that we cannot have duplication of programs across the NU System, and yet the UNL Statistics Department eliminated barely nine months ago.
Join us in watchdogging and explaining it all
Our chapter has lost members and we have new leadership, myself included. We are still here and intend to keep paying attention to the core issues for our organization: shared governance and academic freedom. We encourage you to join us to help us “watchdog” and “explain it all”. To do that you can:
Join our list serve: go.unl.edu/aaupmail
Attend our first chapter meeting on Wednesday, August 26th at 4pm in Regency C of City Campus Union. We plan to have regular meetings and events in the fall and spring semesters.
Attend our state conference meeting with all AAUP chapters across Nebraska colleges and universities on September 19, registration is here: https://luma.com/siztskcf
We’ve invited all candidates for state and federal office and have several commitments from Unicameral and Board of Regents candidates.
Consider writing blogs for us! Sharing information is building power. And we all write for a living, right?! Help us monitor and share information about Board of Regents meetings, Faculty Senate, and, paying close attention to the process for the UNL Chancellor. We need you!
I hope you all have a great start of the school year with more excitement than nerves. Trust that we will be here standing for a stronger university and hope you will join us.
