As a result of legislation proposed by House Republicans during the 2023 legislative session, the Iowa Board of Regents established a study group of three members of the board to investigate not only the effectiveness of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices and programs but also if a need actually exists for the offices and programs. The study group was established in March of 2023 and it delivered ten recommendations in November.
Those recommendations were:
1. Restructure the central, university-wide DEI offices to eliminate any DEI functions that are not necessary for compliance or accreditation. Support services in these offices must be broadly available to all students and/or employees, subject to applicable state or federal eligibility requirements.
2. Review all college, department, or unit-level DEI positions to determine whether DEI specific job responsibilities are necessary for compliance, accreditation or student and employee support services. Any position responsibilities that are not necessary for these purposes shall be adjusted or eliminated. Position and/or working titles shall be reviewed to ensure they appropriately reflect position responsibilities.
3. Review the services provided by offices currently supporting diversity or multicultural affairs in other divisions of the university to ensure they are available to all students, subject to applicable state or federal eligibility requirements. Program promotional and informational materials and websites shall be updated to clarify that the mission of these offices is to support success broadly.
4. Take reasonable steps to assure the following:
- No employee, student, applicant, or campus visitor is required to submit a DEI statement or be evaluated based on participation in DEI initiatives, unless the position is required for DEI-related compliance or accreditation.
- No employee, student, applicant, or campus visitor is compelled to disclose their pronouns.
5. Develop a Board policy prohibiting the consideration of race and other protected class characteristics in admissions that is consistent with the law.
6. Initiate a review of DEI-related general education categories and update category names to accurately reflect the array of options students may select from to satisfy these requirements and ensure a breadth of offerings.
7. Standardize issuance of annual employee guidance regarding the separation of personal political advocacy from university business and employment activities.
8. Explore potential recruitment strategies for advancing diversity of intellectual and philosophical perspective in faculty and staff applicant pools.
9. Explore a proposal, including cost, to establish a widespread initiative that includes opportunities for education and research on free speech and civic education.
10. Annually, the Board office shall issue a reminder to the universities on the requirements of 4.2.I, which governs university websites and other university communications.
The regent universities are supposed to provide a progress update at the April 2024 board meeting. It is worth noting that the April meeting is to occur after the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn for the year. The next scheduled meeting of the board is set for the end of February – no agenda for that meeting has been released yet.
In response to the board’s recommendations, the University of Iowa announced that a 20-person committee of UI administrators and faculty. The committee includes just two Republicans and at least 14 Democrats. It will “make recommendations that will enhance the effectiveness of the university’s services and programs and evaluate central DEI efforts to ensure alignment with compliance, accreditation, and grant requirements. The group will also evaluate the structure of diversity and inclusion programming across campus, consider the skill sets students and employees need to lead on campus, review job responsibilities and titles, and establish measurable goals and outcomes.” The committee’s goal is to develop a plan to address the board’s ten recommendations and present that plan to UI President Barbara Wilson by March 15th.
Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen announced that a focus group of 14 along with a senior leadership team of six, including herself, along with other “faculty, staff, students and administrators who will work with the president and senior leaders to provide feedback and help advise on a plan to comply with the recommendations.” The focus group contains just one Republican and at least six Democrats. The senior leadership team contains two Republicans, two Democrats and two Independents. ISU plans to provide its implementation plans at the April 24th Board of Regents meeting.
The University of Northern Iowa announced shortly after the board’s recommendations were released that “the university will form an advisory group similar to that of Iowa State University and the University of Iowa.”
Five states have banned DEI programs – Florida, Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota and Idaho. CNBC reported last month that even woke tech giants like Meta and Google “have cut staffers and downsized programs that fell under DEI investment.”
DEI, according to Andy Kessler of the Wall Street Journal, can be simply defined this way: “Diversity meant ideological conformity. Equity meant discrimination. Inclusion meant blurring the sexes.”
Bill Ackman is a billionaire hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and graduate of Harvard Business School. He is a donor to Democratic politicians and his foundation has given money to Planned Parenthood. He recently gained notoriety for his activist stance against antisemitic views in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7th. He publicly campaigned for the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay after she failed to condemn the Hamas attacks during congressional testimony. Ackman posted on X (formerly twitter) that he began to look into why Gay did what she did. His focus eventually landed on DEI. He wrote the following:
“The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large. I came to understand that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant.”
Ackman continued, “DEI was not about diversity in its purest form, but rather DEI was a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology.”
“Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist.
As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology.”
Ackman states, “DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country.”
