The Iowa Board of Regents unanimously agreed to postpone consideration of the bylaws for the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom during their consent agenda at their meeting in Ames on Thursday.
The bylaws were drafted by Interim Director Luciano de Castro and include guidelines on who will work on the center and what the center will accomplish. The bylaws include requirements mandated by House File 437, which is the law that created the center.
House File 437, which was signed into law in April, states that the center will teach classes pertaining to historical ideas, traditions, and texts and will “work to expand the intellectual diversity of the university’s academic community.”
Several regents brought up concerns about sections within article four of the bylaws titled “Membership” at their meeting on Wednesday. Regent Robert Cramer suggested the board strike a sentence from section two, over concerns about who would sit on the advisory board.
Regent Nancy Dunkel recommended that the board take more time to look at the bylaws as well. Iowa Board of Regents President Sherry Bates said she had heard similar concerns about who would sit on the board, and agreed it was important to ensure the advisory board membership consisted of a majority share of Iowans.
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Regent Christine Hensley called for the bylaws to be removed from the consent agenda during the open session on Thursday. The motion was seconded by Cramer, who echoed his statements from Wednesday’s discussion.
“I do think we want to get those right and we want to have them right, not just for us right now, but for 10, 20, 30 years from now,” Cramer said. “And so I think structurally, it does need some work.”
Cramer said that he believed it would be best to allow the center’s first advisory council to “have the first crack” at the bylaws and allow the regents to review them again at a later date. Hensley agreed and made a motion to table the discussion until the bylaws were reviewed.
“It has been a long process and we have had a lot of input from various individuals,” she said, “It is important that we get them [the bylaws] exactly right.”
The board unanimously agreed to wait on voting on the bylaws. They will be reviewed by the advisory committee on Nov. 18 and will come before the regents for a vote at a later date.