Jeffrey Nielsen
Jeffrey Nielsen is the founder of the Democracy House Project and a published author. He teaches philosophy at Westminster College in Salt Lake City and at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He is known for supporting gay marriage while being a practicing Mormon.
In 2006 he was a visiting philosophy lecturer at Brigham Young University (BYU). After he wrote an editorial for the Salt Lake Tribune challenging the LDS Church’s position on same-sex marriage, BYU’s philosophy department head said his contract would not be renewed after the term. The editorial criticized the church’s support for a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage. BYU employees sign agreements not to criticize the church as a condition of employment, and Nielsen was later released from duties in his local church as well.
After leaving BYU, he taught philosophy at Westminster College and Utah Valley University. He studied at Weber State University and Boston College, where he was a Teaching Fellow teaching logic, critical thinking, the history and philosophy of art and science, ethics, and epistemology. He has also taught in the BYU philosophy department, offering courses in ethics of leadership, reasoning and writing, and the history and development of science. His teaching focuses on ethics, moral decision-making, and democracy.
Nielsen wrote the book The Myth of Leadership: Creating Leaderless Organizations. He founded the Democracy House Project, a nonprofit that uses a peer-based model to teach political literacy.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:53 (CET).