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Scott Kleeb: Yale history PhD is running for the Senate in Nebraska

A fourth generation Nebraskan, Scott Kleeb grew up listening to his grandfather’s homesteading stories –tales of community, patriotism and public service– and learned the values that would come to shape his life. Scott learned the value of hard work and self-reliance, but he also learned something just as important: Nebraskans depend on each other and, in good times and bad, they help each other. This simple idea –born on the hard plains of Nebraska in the nineteenth century and passed down through generations of Kleebs –called Scott to teaching as his profession and drives his call to public service today.

Scott grew up on military bases overseas, spending his summers at his family’s Nebraska home. Scott’s parents taught the children of our soldiers. Throughout his entire childhood, Scott was surrounded by men and women in uniform, and he developed a profound understanding and abiding respect for their hard work and sacrifice. To this day, soldiers and veterans hold the most special place in Scott’s heart.

Returning from overseas, Scott worked as a ranch hand in Colorado and in Nebraska’s Sandhills, during and after college. There, he saw many of the wonderful communities of his youth eroding as farms and ranches consolidated and economic opportunities moved elsewhere, along with so many families.

Scott went off to Yale University, determined to get a world class education and equally determined to return to Nebraska and serve the state he loves. That determination paid off. Scott got his Masters degree in international relations, and then a PhD in history, with a special focus on agricultural economics. Awards and honors soon followed. His doctoral dissertation won the prize for best work in Western American history. He won another prize fellowship for outstanding teaching. Scott got a coveted position at the United Nations Policy Planning and Analysis Unit and served as an Associate World Fellow at Yale.

His formal education done, Scott returned to Nebraska, just as he dreamed he would and with the same desire to serve in whatever way he could. He decided to run for Congress, narrowly winning as Democrat in one of the most Republican districts in America. Scott took a job at Morgan Ranch and teaches American history at Hastings College in Nebraska, less than two hours from Broken Bow, where the Kleeb family homesteaded in the 1880s.

Scott lives in Hastings with his wife Jane Fleming Kleeb and their children, Kora and Maya.

Read entire article at Scott Kleeb campaign website