Lawmaker refers University of Iowa job postings to AG for containing ‘DEI language’

DES MOINES — The Republican chair of Iowa’s House Higher Education Committee has referred three University of Iowa job advertisements to the attorney general for containing “DEI language” — which has been banned by recently-passed legislation.

Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, learned of the potential violations from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni — or ACTA — a 31-year-old independent nonprofit organization “dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities.”

Widely recognized as conservative-leaning, the ACTA was flagged in a recent “action report” from the 111-year-old American Association of University Professors as helping to “instigate a culture war in higher education.”

“It has an innocuous name and mission statement,” according to the AAUP report. “Yet ACTA has engaged in a quiet campaign to subdue faculty authority and shared governance and urge trustees to overpower presidents and faculty governing bodies when conflicts arise.

“ACTA is explicit about its strategy: ‘Trustees are the key to changing public higher education’,”

In advance of a planned ACTA presentation to lawmakers Wednesday about “engaged trustee governance,” representatives shared findings of their research into the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa.

When Collins noticed the group found “the University of Iowa’s job openings still include DEI language,” he asked for evidence, and an ACTA official provided three:

Collins forwarded the examples to Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office, which for more than six months has been investigating an undercover video aired on Fox News in July showing a UI assistant director describing ways her campus was skirting new anti-Dei laws.

“We're essentially finding ways to operate around it. So that was our solution,” UI Leadership and Student Organization Development Assistant Director Andrea Tinoco told the unknown person taking the undercover video. “So it still exists. DEI and student organizations and all of that. Like it is real. It still exists. We are still doing DEI work.”

Both she and another employee captured on undercover video — Iowa Memorial Union Senior Associate Director Cory Lockwood — have been on paid administrative leave since July 29 and July 31, respectively, pending the AG investigation.

Considering their annual salaries of $62,526 for Tinoco and $117,239 for Lockwood, the university has paid them a total of more than $89,671 to stand by and not work — at about $31,503 for Tinoco and $58,168 for Lockwood.

“The status of the investigation is ongoing,” Jen Green, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Attorney General’s Office told The Gazette on Jan. 8.

The anti-DEI legislation in question passed in 2024, banning Iowa’s public universities from having a DEI office, spending or staffing any DEI positions, conducting DEI training, and applying DEI in admission and hiring decisions.

ACTA: Regents should focus on finances, academics, engagement

The ACTA presentation on Wednesday stressed the Board of Regents’ need to be accountable for what’s happening on the campuses they oversee — even if they aren’t involved in the finite details of every classroom and lab.

“Board members of any organization, but particularly universities, assume that the primary duty is to the institution proper. And yes, it's true, regents owe a duty of care and a duty of loyalty to their institutions,” ACTA Chief of Staff and Senior Vice President of Strategy Armand Alacbay said. “But, naturally, there are always going to be some cases where the interests of the institution are not necessarily in lockstep with the interests of the public.”

And it’s the regents’ role to identify those interests and intervene.

“In the words of former Harvard President Derek Bok, ‘Trustees are supposed to act as a mediating agent between the interests of the institution and the needs of the surrounding society’,” he said, paraphrasing to mean, “students, faculty, administrators, alumni, donors, the neighbors that surround the campus, town-gown relations, even taxpayers — all these groups have incentives that are in tension with each other. The job of the governing board is to mediate all of this.”

Said another way, according to Alacbay, “Board members should be receptive to all, but beholden to none.”

From that vantage point, he urged Iowa’s regents to focus on fiscal stewardship, academic excellence, academic freedom, and community engagement. And he said ACTA offers tools to help, including a “How Colleges Spend Money” website that taps a decade of public data from more than 1,500 public and private campuses.

That website found the University of Iowa’s administrative spending is “fairly low” at just over $2,800 per student — compared to the UI peer average near $6,000 per student.

“As for tuition as a percentage of median household income, it's 14.75 percent,” Alacbay said. “That is 25th in the nation — so dead center. And our average graduate debt for institutions is just north of $22,000 — ranking 34th in the nation.”

In terms of academic excellence, ACTA has created a “What Will They Learn?” website that gives letter grades to colleges and universities based on how many of the following subjects are required in their core curriculum: composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and natural science.

Only six public universities and 13 private campuses have earned an “A,” while 134 privates and 56 publics received an “F” — including the University of Northern Iowa.

Within the state of Iowa, every graded campus received either a “D” or “F” except the University of Iowa, which landed a “B.”

“The most common culprits, when you dig into the data, are things like raw distribution requirements — so students can avoid taking, for example, a survey course in American history of government, which may be an option to fulfill, say, the arts and humanities requirement, but so could other less rigorous courses,” Alacbay said, urging regents to get more involved in setting the standards for their campuses.

“Governance is not a distant or abstract thing. It’s not a spectator sport,” he said. “Stewardship is not passive. It's something that actively has to be taken up by regents; it's really just asking questions and building relationships and setting standards and living up to them.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com