Ben Sasse

Ben Sasse (born February 22, 1972, Plainview, Nebraska, U.S.) is an American Republican politician who represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023. He later served as president of the University of Florida (2023–24).

Education and career

Sasse grew up in Fremont, near Omaha, Nebraska, where he excelled in high school. He went on to study at Harvard University (B.A., 1994), St. John’s College (M.A., 1998), and the University of Oxford. In the mid-1990s he married, and he and his wife, Melissa Sasse, later had three children. Sasse also attended Yale University, where he earned a Ph.D. in history in 2004.

Sasse began his professional career working at the Boston Consulting Group and then at McKinsey & Company, advising private companies and federal agencies as well as civilian groups in Iraq. During the first and second terms of Pres. George W. Bush (2001–09), he worked in the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security before becoming assistant secretary for planning and evaluation (2007–09) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He also taught at the University of Texas until becoming president (2009–14) of Midland University, a private school in his hometown of Fremont.

Senate

In 2014 Sasse entered the U.S. Senate race, running on a broadly conservative ticket that focused on opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and on entitlement reform, notably raising the retirement age to reflect increasing life expectancies. Sasse easily defeated his Democratic opponent and took office in 2015. During the presidential election the following year, he was harshly critical of Republican nominee—and eventual winner—Donald Trump. In 2017 Sasse published the book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, Sasse remained a vocal critic, though he often supported the administration’s policies. In 2017 he notably voted for a massive tax-reform bill, and he backed an unsuccessful effort to repeal the PPACA. In 2019 the House of Representatives impeached Trump after he allegedly withheld aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country into opening a corruption investigation into Joe Biden (in 2020 Biden became the Democratic presidential nominee). The Senate trial was held in early 2020, and Sasse voted not to convict Trump, saying that voters could give their verdict in that year’s election; the president was acquitted in an almost party-line vote. Shortly thereafter the country began struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sasse criticized Trump’s handling of the crisis.

Sasse easily won reelection in 2020, and, in the presidential contest, Biden defeated Trump. Sasse later rejected Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that there was widespread voter fraud. On January 6, 2021, Sasse and other members of Congress met to certify Biden’s win, but the proceedings were temporarily halted when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. Sasse condemned the deadly attack and said that the president was partly to blame. On January 13, a week before Trump’s presidency ended, the House impeached him for “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate trial was held the following month, and Sasse and six other Republicans voted with Democrats to convict, though Trump was acquitted. Shortly thereafter Sasse was censured by Republican officials in Nebraska, and he responded by saying that “politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude.”

University of Florida

In January 2023 Sasse resigned from the Senate, and the following month he became president of the University of Florida. However, his tenure lasted just 17 months. In July 2024 he resigned, citing the declining health of his wife, who had suffered a stroke in 2007. But others noted that he appeared to have lost the backing of the board of trustees, who had grown increasingly concerned about Florida’s drop in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. In addition, it was later revealed that Sasse’s office budget had dramatically increased after he hired a number of former staffers and other Republican officials to lucrative contracts. Sasse continued to serve as a professor at the university.

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