Iowa board reworks anti-DEI course policy proposal following pushback

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Dive Brief:

• The Iowa Board of Regents has removed references to “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” from a controversial proposal to limit what courses the state’s three public universities can require. The regents plan to vote on the issue during a special meeting on Tuesday.
• Under the original proposal, academic programs would not have been able to require students to take classes containing “substantial content that conveys DEI or CRT.” Universities that wanted an exemption would have had to gain board approval every other year.
• Following public pushback, the board reworked the proposal to state that “faculty may teach controversial subjects” when relevant to course content, but they are expected to “present coursework in a way that reflects the range of scholarly views and ongoing debate in the field.” The revision also leaves the board the option to “periodically” review the universities’ compliance.

Dive Insight:

The Iowa Board of Regents — which oversees the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa — has so far delayed the vote on the proposal twice, last postponing the decision at its July 30 meeting. 

The original language included extensive examples of DEI topics that would have been restricted, including anti-racism, “transgender ideology,” systemic oppression, and unconscious or implicit bias.

“One of the primary reasons we are not taking up the DEI/CRT policy is that the discussions on how to best implement the ideas that were brought forward are still ongoing,” Board President Sherry Bates said in prepared remarks, citing responses from the community. “It has become clear that we would be better served by something more comprehensive.”

Much of the local response has been negative.

Five Iowa educator advocacy groups joined together to form the Iowa Higher Education Coalition to oppose the policy and launched a petition “to urge the Iowa Board of Regents to firmly reject efforts to restrict what students can learn.” The petition, which does not address the updated policy, had garnered 470 signatures as of Friday afternoon.

The faculty union at the University of Northern Iowa, one of the members of the coalition, voiced opposition at the board’s June meeting, when it was first scheduled to vote on the proposal.

“There is no middle position, no position of slight appeasement,” United Faculty President Christopher Martin told board members at the meeting. “Either you stand for free expression at Iowa’s universities or you don’t. And God help Iowa, its public universities and all the citizens of this state if you don’t.”

Martin said that the proposal came from two out-of-state think tanks’  generic recommendations, and he alleged that it runs contrary to state law.

Since that meeting, the board has reworked the language significantly.

“University teachers shall be entitled to academic freedom in the classroom in discussing the teachers’ course subject, but shall not introduce into the teaching controversial matters that have no relation to the subject,” the updated version said.

Regardless of how the board votes next week, the Iowa Legislature may step in.

State Rep. Taylor Collins, chair of the Legislature’s newly created Higher Education Committee and an avid opponent of DEI efforts, voiced support for the board’s original policy proposal last month.

“If this policy is not adopted, the House Committee on Higher Education stands ready to act,” he said on social media after the board delayed a vote on the policy for the second time.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill in May 2024 that prohibits public universities from maintaining or funding DEI offices or from officially weighing in on a wide array of issues. The list includes allyship, cultural appropriation, systemic oppression, social justice, racial privilege or “any related formulation” of the listed topics. 

The law prompted PEN America, a free expression advocacy group, to include Iowa on its yearly list of states that enacted “educational gag orders.”

The board of regents has also moved to limit diversity work on campus. In 2023, it ordered the universities under its purview to cut all campuswide DEI efforts not required to comply with the law or accreditation standards.