The reason Iowa Regents caved on DEI
Lack of political balance causes bad decisions
The Iowa Board of Regents is rightly taking a lot of criticism over last week’s decision to largely gut university Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. The board instructed the three state universities to retain only those DEI efforts necessary to maintain federal funding. Everything else must go.
The Des Moines Register took the board to task for “rolling over” on DEI, largely caving in to Republican legislators who see DEI as another “woke” program indoctrinating young minds.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette urged Regents to sustain, not cut DEI services, opining, “This isn’t just another front in the culture war. Curtailing DEI efforts could have significant negative consequences for the universities, harming student and faculty recruitment. The need for focusing on DEI isn’t going away in an increasingly diverse nation that is coming to terms with past discrimination.”
How can a supposedly independent board like the Regents cave so easily? The reason is clear when you look at the political makeup of the board.
State law requires political balance on all state boards and commissions, meaning that one party can have no more than a simple majority. The Board of Regents has nine members, so no more than five can be Republicans.
But Governor Reynolds and Republican legislators now routinely violate the spirit of that law by appointing political independents to boards and commissions. The Board of Regents has five Republicans, three independents and only one Democrat.
No wonder the Board of Regents caved so easily. About one-third of Iowa’s active registered voters are Democrats, but they have virtually no voice on the agency that controls the University of Iowa, Iowa State and UNI.
The political balance law was passed by the legislature in noble recognition of the fact that even if one party controls the governor’s office and/or the legislature, there are hundreds of thousands of Iowans in the other party who deserve a voice in how the state runs.
The Regents are not alone
The Board of Regents is hardly alone in shutting out voices of Iowa Democrats. The State Board of Education (charged with issuing rules about which books to ban) has only eight of its authorized ten positions filled. Four of those eight are Republicans, two are Democrats and two are independents.
The Iowa Board of Medicine, which issued rules to doctors last week about how to stay on the right side of the six-week abortion ban, has eight of ten positions currently filled. Five of those eight are Republican, three are independents and not one single Democrat is currently serving.
The Board of Dentistry has nine members. Five are Republicans and four are independents. Not one Democrat to be found.
We’re being pulled kicking and screaming into the 1950’s
I could go on, but you get the point. In my view, the Regents decision to gut DEI programs gives Iowa a huge black eye. How do you recruit faculty and students to schools that so blatantly deny our racial history, that fail to recognize the cultural changes happening in America? It puts our state institutions on the wrong side of history. Once again, Iowa is being pulled back into the 1950’s by ultra conservative lawmakers. Lawmakers like state Representative Taylor Collins, who sponsored the anti-DEI bill. He wrote on X, “Iowa will no longer bend the knee to the DEI CRT (critical race theory) agenda being pushed at our public universities.”
Bend the knee? That language reveals a lot about Collins and his ilk. It says, “You can’t force me to admit our country has a racist past!” Instead of worrying about bending his knee, perhaps he should pull his head out of another part of his anatomy and take a look around at America. It’s changing. So is Iowa. Students at Iowa’s three state universities should get all the help they can adapting to that change.
So long as Iowa Democrats get shut out of important boards and commissions, Iowa will fall further behind the change sweeping over our land.
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Iowa nice is synonymous with Iowa white. They want to do only what is minimally required to receive Federal $$$. What does that tell you. Rural manure.
Thanks for the article, as frustrating as it is to hear. I didn’t know so many boards were so lopsided, but not surprised.