Earlier this month, the Iowa Board of Regents approved a new policy dictating how faculty at the state’s public universities must teach controversial subjects. Professors, the Board declared, must “present coursework in a way that reflects the range of scholarly views and ongoing debate in the field” when teaching about “controversial topics” and do so “in a manner that fosters critical thinking and avoids indoctrination of one perspective.” Further, the policy includes a provision that applies to all topics, not just the “controversial,” stipulating that students’ grades must not reflect their “agreement or disagreement with particular viewpoints.”
On the surface, this may sound like a call for fairness. Such policies, which vaguely dictate how professors must teach controversial topics, suggest that faculty might grade students based on opinion rather than merit. In doing so, they both undermine the professionalism of faculty and inevitably stifle the very debate they claim to promote. Look no further than Indiana for how such policies can be weaponized against faculty. Iowa’s policy marks an escalation in a campaign by lawmakers and the governor to police college classrooms and silence open debate.
The Road to the New Policy
To understand the cycle of legislative pressure that got us here, we need to go further back to when Iowa added a sweeping “DEI ban” to the state’s 2024 budget bill, even though the Iowa Board of Regents had already passed a similar policy in 2023. The budget bill called for the shuttering of DEI offices, defined expansively to include any policies, training, activities, or nonacademic programming “implemented with reference to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation,” and, although it was supposed to go into effect in June 2025, universities, urged on by the Board of Regents, rushed to implement its provisions in 2024.
In 2025, lawmakers tried to expand this ban into classrooms with HF 269, which would have blocked students from being required or “constrained” to complete courses with “DEI or CRT content.” The bill stalled in the legislative process, but, soon after, the Board of Regents proposed a nearly identical policy, Policy Manual Chapter 3.23 – DEI and CRT Requirements. When faculty and Iowans raised serious concerns about the bill’s infringement on academic freedom, the Regents paused a July vote, acknowledging, “This is an important issue, and we have heard people’s concerns.”
Legislators, on the other hand, were not content to wait. State Representative Taylor Collins threatened, “If this policy is not adopted, the House Committee on Higher Education stands ready to act.” Shortly thereafter, three covertly recorded videos surfaced online, showing university staff candidly discussing how they were navigating the state’s “DEI ban,” including one video that may have been filmed before the ban’s compliance deadline. These clips were held up as evidence that university employees were “dodging” the law. Governor Kim Reynolds said she was “appalled,” and lawmakers demanded immediate action.
The Chilling Effect on Campuses
Faced with this firestorm, the Regents took up the issue again. They stripped out the explicit mentions of DEI and CRT, but doubled down on policing how and what faculty teach. The policy passed quickly and with only one dissenting vote.
To be clear, the new policy does not promote balance or openness. Instead, it assumes that faculty must be monitored and restrained. The future consequences are plain to see: faculty are likely to just steer away from teaching about or having their students discuss controversial topics. Why risk presenting a forceful scholarly argument, assigning a provocative text, or leading a contentious class discussion, if doing so might attract scrutiny from a legislator looking to root out “indoctrination”? Faculty would have reason to opt for caution over candor, depriving students of the rigorous debate that higher education is meant to foster.
During deliberations, the lone dissenting Regent, Nancy Dunkel, raised important questions about the policy’s problematic requirement that faculty teach multiple perspectives on controversial issues: “What exactly is controversial, and who will decide? Can anyone declare something as controversial? … How do we present both sides of the Holocaust?”
Her concern cuts to the heart of the issue. If any topic can be declared “controversial” by politicians, then faculty are left vulnerable to arbitrary oversight. The very effort to mandate teaching “both sides” of sensitive issues and to avoid advancing “one perspective” not only undermines intellectual credibility but also threatens to politicize knowledge itself. Mandated neutrality in the classroom is not neutrality at all. It is censorship disguised as fairness.
Beyond Policy: A Deeper Concern
Our concern is not just about disagreements over DEI or academic freedom. What we are witnessing is a deliberate pattern: Iowa’s governor and legislature are using channels outside of the normal, public, legislative process to pressure the Board of Regents into carrying out their ideological goals. Instead of debate, deliberation, and compromise, we see political actors leveraging covert recordings, public threats, and orchestrated outrage. Each new restriction is seen not as an endpoint but as justification for further escalation. Iowa lawmakers’ pressure on the Board of Regents to ensure a desired outcome is a startling example of political intimidation or “jawboning.”
What’s at Stake
Academic freedom exists precisely because scholarship requires fearless inquiry. Faculty are not meant to bend to political dictates when they teach; they are meant to bring their expertise, analysis, and interpretation into the classroom. Vibrant debate flourishes, and students learn and grow confident, when professors are trusted to do their jobs, not when they are forced into straitjackets.
The Iowa Board of Regents, state legislature, and Governor Reynolds should reverse course. Not only does this policy risk chilling conversation inside and outside the classroom at Iowa public universities, but the history of the policy, pushed through by the Board of Regents in the midst of intense political pressure, represents an unacceptable pattern of intimidation. What is at stake is not only the rights of faculty and students’ freedom to learn, but the independence of Iowa universities from government overreach.
