UI Center for Intellectual Freedom chair: ‘We will not fail’

IOWA CITY — Thanks to personal invitations from Gov. Kim Reynolds, 100 percent of the scholars, researchers, and university faculty across the country asked to serve on an advisory council for a new Legislature-mandated University of Iowa-based Center for Intellectual Freedom said yes.

That swelled the council from a minimum nine members, as required by House File 437 that created the UI center in the last Legislative session, to 26 members — most of whom convened last week for the first time to introduce themselves, pick committee assignments, and pass bylaws, among other things.

“The Legislature was really important in making this center exist, but Gov. Kim Reynolds also was really helpful and provided instrumental support for us,” interim center director and UI economics professor Luciano de Castro said during Tuesday’s meeting. “She made a point of inviting each of the scholars in our advisory council personally and directly.”

Those members include Harald Uhlig, a German microeconomist and University of Chicago economics professor who made news in 2020 when he criticized the Black Lives Matter movement on social media — comparing its members to “flat-Earthers.”

“I’m very pleased and proud to be part of this initiative,” Uhlig said during the first council meeting Tuesday. “This looks like a very promising and very important initiative, and I'm so glad that it got started. We have our hands full in getting good things done and changing the university world as it is. I mean, much is broken, and if we can make a bit of a dent in improving matters, I think that would be absolutely fantastic.”

Richard Lowery, an associate finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin who during the meeting was appointed chair of the advisory council’s scholar committee, highlighted the need to maintain the center’s integrity — given issues others like it have faced nationally.

“If you look at what’s happened in some of the places that have marginalized the academic side,” he said, “it has become, at a minimum, a public relations problem.”

Regent and advisory council chair Christine Hensley acknowledged the attention the new UI center has and will continue to receive.

“I can assure you that the legislators that passed this, myself, and the Board of Regents are extremely sensitive to what you have just indicated,” she said. “We also understand that this center is really being watched throughout the country.

“And we will not fail. We will not fail.”

‘It is about politics’

Discussion among the robust group of mostly-male scholars, regents, past lawmakers and businessmen grew more lively when it turned to committee appointments — including a five-person scholar committee of faculty from out-of-state universities and a nine-person executive committee that includes those five professors.

“I would like to talk about a balance,” former Democratic Iowa state Sen. Liz Mathis told the group during selection of the council’s executive committee. “I would think that we try to get political viewpoints from at least one person who sways Democratic.”

Mathis — one of just two women on the council — is herself among the few with explicit left-leaning views.

“OK, excellent,” Hensley said. “I'm just trying to think through of the people I know who would be Democrat. I don't know all that, to be perfectly honest.”

De Castro noted the council is in compliance with state law requiring it have political balance — in that 11 are Republican, three report being Democrat, and 12 identify as independent, although many in that group have expressed conservative ideology online or otherwise.

“Liz, would you be willing to serve on the executive committee?” Hensley asked.

“I would,” Mathis said.

“OK, so let's put it up to 11,” Hensley said about her proposal to increase the executive committee from the original plan of nine. “I don't think that's inappropriate based upon a group of 26.”

But others disagreed — including Lowery, among the council members identified as independent, who sued his UT campus in 2023 for funding and supporting “left-wing” causes like affirmative action, critical-race theory indoctrination, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I think what the bylaws anticipated was the majority would be from the scholar committee,” he said. “And I don't see how we could have an executive committee that functions at that size. I'm already a little worried about nine, and I don't think we should be picking the executive committee based on political considerations, either.”

Maintaining an executive committee majority of out-of-state academics is imperative — given its charge to conduct a national search for a permanent director, which he called “an academic position.”

Mark Bauerlein, an English professor emeritus at Emory University, agreed — urging the import of ignoring political representation and arguing even calling it political is “precisely the degradation and distortion” that led to its creation in the first place.

“I think, as far as the appointment thing, that political representation has nothing to do with it and not ought to be considered in the slightest bit — in terms of membership on this committee,” said Baulerein, among the council’s independents who has written of his opposition to DEI and in 2023 was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on the board of trustees for the New College of Florida during a controversial shake-up.

Thomas Gallanis, law professor at George Mason University who previously was on the UI faculty and identifies as a Republican, echoed the concerns.

“I'm also very concerned at the suggestion that every single committee somehow has to meet the political representation requirement,” he said. “That isn't my understanding of Iowa law. That requirement applies to the advisory council as a whole. And I think for the executive committee, we shouldn't be making decisions based on politics. We want an executive committee that's going to be in the best position to discharge the functions of the executive committee — most prominently being the director search.”

Mathis shot back that — like it or not, deny it or not — the center and its advisory council will be “talking a political language.”

“It is about politics,” she said. “That's a large portion of why this whole center was created.”

Lowery suggested the council check other UI academic units “to see if they are all politically balanced.”

“Is the gender studies department or whatever you have …,” Lowery said. “This is going to be set up as an academic unit … It seems a little strange to just apply this rule here.”

The debate about keeping the executive group to nine members compelled several to bow out — including Pete Matthes, the sole UI employee on the council, and Kurt Tjaden — one of three regents on the council.

The final executive committee — giving the out-of-state scholars a majority — includes:

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