Why is the Board of Regents disrespecting Iowa college students?

The Board of Regents, in its latest Policy Proposal (Chapter 3.23), is demonstrating how little respect it has for students at Iowa’s state universities. Clearly, it has no confidence in the intelligence, critical thinking capacity, and discernment of students at the state universities when encountering material that deals with such things as “unconscious or implicit bias,” “anti-racism,” “systemic oppression” or “social justice.”

The Regents themselves may be afraid of having to grapple with some aspects of our history (like slavery and the fight for its abolition or gender inequity and the struggle to win women’s right to vote), but they should not impose those fears on Iowa students. Students are quite capable of evaluating historical or cultural analysis and making their own judgments.

The unthinking and myopic posture the regents have adopted raises the question of why such people should be given any responsibility for guiding world-class universities, whose very stature is built on free inquiry, academic freedom, and a fundamental belief in the value of critical inquiry.

Iowa citizens should respect the capacity of their own students and their talented teachers to uphold these values even if the Regents seem incapable of doing so.

Shelton Stromquist

Professor Emeritus of History, University of Iowa

Iowa City