The Board of Regents finalized the advisory board for the newly established University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom on Sept. 17.
Described as a center aiming to promote intellectual diversity on campus, the advisory board, which is also in charge of appointing the director of the center, is ironically missing the one thing it claims to value: diversity.
Within the 26-member board, only two are women, only half are from Iowa, and many politically lean far right, with only three Democrats in comparison to 11 Republicans and 12 independents.
Intellectual freedom is the idea that we can seek and receive information about the world without censorship and with limited political interference. The center aims to address the so-called progressive crisis in education, which is the concern that students are supposedly being taught to critique the U.S.
But with a demographic makeup so disproportionate, I’m skeptical these intellectual discussions will be free.
As someone who has taken probably every history class offered throughout my primary education and is currently pursuing a political science degree at the UI, the purpose of this center is
a prevarication.
Throughout my K-12 education, I was taught the basics of U.S. history, from the Revolutionary War and the Constitution, all the way to the controversial Vietnam War and Sept. 11 attacks. The argument that schools are failing to teach America’s foundations is simply false. In reality, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, and everyone involved in appointing the center’s advisory board want to limit talk of America’s failures, especially at a collegiate level.
I understand the center’s goals for primary school. It is appropriate, if not necessary, to teach U.S. history, where a standardized curriculum encourages an overarching knowledge of our past. But teaching objectivity in education means teaching the good and the bad, regardless if it feels unpatriotic. Acknowledging slavery, segregation, and war is not anti-American — it is
just accurate.
In theory, balancing ideas on college campuses makes sense. At this level, professors are given academic freedom to investigate ideas in their field without repercussions. College campuses, like the UI, have the impression of being more progressive than their neighboring towns. In the 2024 election, Democrats won by almost 40 percent of the vote in Johnson County.
No one wants to be the minority. Picking a board of 11 conservatives in a typically liberal university town could help address the growing feeling among Republicans that their voices are marginalized.
“But it is not a chemical formula that we need to balance. Bringing a conservative entity or center in this case to dilute the progressiveness of college campuses is not going to change much.” Brett Johnson, UI professor and First Amendment lawyer, said.
“College is made for critical thinking. To be a critical thinker means to hold the powerful accountable. We have this rhetoric coming from the right that says they are the victims. But in the end, I think the predominant power in America tends to be conservative,” Johnson said.
And with the board so politically and demographically homogenous, the pursuit for intellectual diversity looks increasingly like a branding strategy for conservatives, rather than a
sincere commitment.
National trends make the board and center seem insincere. Across the country, Republicans have tried to ban books about “woke” issues and restrict classroom discussions on race and gender. The Trump administration has made efforts to whitewash history, removing artifacts that have an “inappropriate” focus on tainting American history, like images and texts about enslavement and theft from Native American lands.
Most recently, President Donald Trump ordered the removal of the historic “Scourged Back” image, showing the horrors of slavery during the Civil War Era. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Trump criticized museums for being “out of control” by displaying art that portrayed “how bad slavery was.”
Rewriting history will never be OK. And if these national conservative changes are upheld in local education, we risk the very thing college is about — critical thinking.
The Center for Intellectual Freedom fails to show people that objective education is non-partisan.