An institution of higher education is a partnership among students and alumni, faculty and administrators, donors and trustees, neighborhoods and more, to build a community - and a culture.Collection: Education
For a Nebraska kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nebraska football was a quasi-religion, so I ran out to get The Omaha World-Herald every morning, salivating for the sports page. My dad, however, required that I read one front page story and one editorial before I was allowed to turn to the sports.Collection: Sports
The health of our republic depends on shared principles like the First Amendment, but it is also built on the Teddy Roosevelt-like vigor of its citizens and local self-reliance.Collection: Health
The signers of the Declaration of Independence did not pledge their fortunes and sacred honor so the federal government could play 'helicopter parent' to a free people. They saw government as our shared project to secure liberty, doing a few big things and doing them well.Collection: Independence
The word deepfake has become a generic noun for the use of machine-learning algorithms and facial-mapping technology to digitally manipulate people's voices, bodies and faces. And the technology is increasingly so realistic that the deepfakes are almost impossible to detect.Collection: Technology
Our pandering politicians compete to add names to the dependency of entitlement rolls instead of evaluating the success of these programs by how many people leave the dole and are restored to an independence. And these bulging entitlements are saddling our offspring with unsustainable generational debt.Collection: Independence
Obamacare has eliminated choices for millions of families, suffocated patient-centered medical innovation, and moved the United States closer to European-style centralized planning.Collection: Medical
Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.
Deepfakes - seemingly authentic video or audio recordings that can spread like wildfire online - are likely to send American politics into a tailspin, and Washington isn't paying nearly enough attention to the very real danger that's right around the corner.
Among the responsibilities of each citizen in a participatory democracy is keeping ourselves sufficiently informed so that we can participate effectively, argue our positions honorably, and hopefully, forge sufficient consensus to understand each other and then to govern.
Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations find strategies to get through some very ugly crises.
Becoming a reader grows our horizons, our appetite for the good, the true and the beautiful, and our empathy.
The American work ethic is, thankfully, still deeply engraved in rural Nebraska souls. This is who we are, and we here in Nebraska have far more to teach Washington, D.C. than Washington, D.C. has to teach us.
The Chinese Communist Party and the American people are locked in conflict.
Rising political tribalism, shamelessly exaggerating our opponents' claims or behavior, is leaving us vulnerable: No one loves America's internal fighting - and our increasingly siloed news consumption - more than Vladimir Putin.
The NBA has prided itself on free expression. Its players and owners have a well-earned reputation for speaking out on social justice in the United States. Sadly, it seems woke capitalism stops at the water's edge.
Living in a republic demands a great deal of us.
Democrats have bad ideas and Republicans have no ideas.
Nebraska Republicans believe that Nebraska Democrats love their kids, and I believe we can have a constructive conversation with everybody.
The people I like most are the people who are principled enough on both the right and the left to believe it is their duty to advocate, even though they may lose, and are not committed to their incumbency over the future of America.
Obamacare is a big deal to me. It's terrible legislation.
I believe zealously in conservative ideals, but Nebraskans want people who get things done, not just those who scream at each other.
I'm a right-wing conservative.
Keeping our agricultural sector strong and secure should be a bipartisan concern.
Farmers and ranchers need long-term certainty about who they will be able to sell to and under what terms.
Subsidies and bailouts cannot compensate for uncertain or permanently diminished market access.
The USMCA is a good deal for American agriculture.
Modern technology gives us surprising glimpses into human development. It helps us plan for and celebrate new life.
Abortion is emotional and difficult to discuss.
Planned Parenthood can't hide their sickening abortion business behind a 'safe, legal and rare' slogan.
In America, we divide federal power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches so that no one holds too much power. This is sixth-grade civics: Congress writes the laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts apply those laws fairly and dispassionately to cases.
Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.
Congress is where Americans are supposed to have our big, messy political fights. That's because the people who make the laws need to be hired and fired by the people. Don't like the laws? Fire the lawmakers.
Courts do not make the law.
Government never adapts quickly to new challenges, but our slow-footedness on cyber is unparalleled.
Since arriving in Washington in January 2015, I have pushed for a strategic framework that clearly articulates how we'll tackle threats in cyberspace.
The nature and scope of security threats in the cyber era are four-dimensional compared to the early nuclear age.
There were giant scale barriers to becoming a nuclear power, whereas launching a cyberattack requires only some coding capability, a laptop and an Internet connection.
My grandma was a child of the Depression, and knew the tragedy of having her home outside Diller was destroyed by a tornado.
We must repeal Obamacare, but even more, we must replace the worldview that underlies and enabled it.
The first time I began to really think about politics was in fifth grade, during President Reagan's first term.
I think we should have a universal, a shared cultural or societal goal, of universal health insurance coverage. That's completely different from saying the government can solve all of those problems, or that it can micromanage every aspect of the health delivery system. I think we know that it can't do that.
We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.
I think Medicaid harms people.
I think most Americans believe in a basic social safety net.
I'm often asked by search committees for public and private universities to help them think about how to find their next president.
As a former college president, I am well aware that every university is a complicated ecosystem, not a linear widget factory.
From the first-year students' fall orientation to the board's annual budget-approval meeting, everything a healthy college does requires a shared sense of mission.
It doesn't matter whether the challenge we face is large or small, whether it's a statewide disaster or a crisis just on our own block - Nebraskans face it with courage, goodwill, and the unwavering conviction that we are part of one community of neighbors and friends.
Every day, across our state, we see grit and resilience.