Gov. Kim Reynolds on UI Center for Intellectual Freedom: ‘It's a chance to lead America’

IOWA CITY — When conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered in broad daylight at Utah Valley University in September, he was trying to solve the very problems with higher education that would take his life that day, his friend and fellow conservative activist Christopher Rufo told a crowd in the University of Iowa Old Capital on Saturday.

“This is something that we can’t blame on mental illness,” said Rufo, whose opposition to critical race theory and diversity programming on college campuses has influenced President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education this term.

“The man who assassinated Charlie Kirk was the victim of a profound cultural nihilism,” Rufo said, and pointed to American universities as the source of the problem.

“This is someone who was ill-served by the institutions around him,” he said. “This is someone who was wrapped up in ideologies, particular transgender ideology. This is someone who, from the discourse in the digital world in particular, had absorbed the idea that it was OK to kill because of a difference of opinion.”

And, Rufo added, “These ideas don't come from nowhere.”

“In fact, these ideas come from academic institutions,” he said. “And if you look at many of the problems in American life — you look at racialist ideology, gender ideology, and you look at the nihilism that is affecting so many young people who feel like your country isn't worth participating in, feel like they have nowhere to go, who feel like their lives are at a dead end … These ideas come from part of the public mind which is formulated in our universities.”

But Iowa — with its Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa, mandated by legislation passed last session — stands to chart a new higher education course, Rufo, Gov. Kim Reynolds, and U.S. Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education David Barker said Saturday during the center’s inaugural kickoff event.

“What you're doing is extremely important, beyond the center, beyond politics, beyond all this,” Rufo said. “It's a calling.”

Criticizing the UI administration for not attending the two-day event — Rufo praised state leaders in the room, including Reynolds, who stayed for Rufo’s full remarks.

“The governor is here, legislators are here, regents are here, but the president and the provost — always the provost — haven’t graced us with their presence tonight,” Rufo said. “Why is that? What's more important than the beginning of an academic research institution that was commissioned by the Legislature that has the highest aspiration of the university at its core — to unlock the freedom of thinking and to reorient the university toward the highest good?”

Barker — who served as a regent for six years before recently moving to Washington, D.C. for his assistant secretary position in the Trump administration — said he’s hopeful for the center’s success, in part, because it answers to the regents and is advised by a 26-member independent council that includes just one UI representative and 13 faculty from other out-of-state institutions.

“We look forward to seeing the University of Iowa's Center for Intellectual Freedom become a model for the country, an example of what happens when an American university takes seriously its highest call — to pursue the truth without intimidation, without exclusion, and without apology,” he said.

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‘How bad things had gotten’

But by Barker’s telling — and that of Republican lawmakers, regents, and Rufo — the University of Iowa didn’t step into this leadership role willingly.

Six years ago, when Barker first joined the regents in 2019, he began pushing for a center like the one recently created — but found no appetite for it.

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“There wasn't a sense yet of the how bad things had gotten at a lot of universities,” Barker told an audience during one of seven event sessions spanning Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. “It was difficult at that time to convince people that a center like this was needed.”

But Barker found inroads when lawmakers began criticizing diversity, equity and inclusion programming, staffing and spending at Iowa’s public universities, and regents created a DEI committee to get ahead of any legislation in the works.

“I chaired that committee, and I managed to slip into the directives that were passed something about setting up a center,” Barker said. “And there was plenty of resistance, and the proposal was watered down considerably. But we passed a directive to the universities to explore the idea of setting up a center like this.”

Unfortunately, according to Barker, “the universities were not particularly interested in a center like what we have here.”

“I found the efforts, particularly of the University of Iowa, to be almost laughable.”

UI leadership proposed a “small pilot program” involving the residence halls, Barker said, “but nothing like a real academic center.”

“And I I thought a lot of the other DEI initiatives from our committee were frankly sabotaged at the university level,” Barker said, noting lawmakers — with legislation and public pressure — eventually upped enforcement and implementation of the DEI changes.

Then, before the last Legislative session, Barker received a call from conservative UI economics professor Luciano de Castro — along with others — about the need for a center. And Barker, along with newly-appointed regent Christine Hensley, met with lawmakers over breakfast at the downtown Des Moines Tea Room to discuss strategy in creating what would later become the Center for Intellectual Freedom.

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“We managed to get the bill through the Legislature,” Barker said.

Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, said he was pleased with efforts at Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa to comply with the Legislature’s anti-DEI measures and compulsion for improved civic education and ideological diversity on campus.

“But really we didn’t see much action being taken here at the University of Iowa,” Collins said while speaking in the Old Capital on Saturday during the inaugural invent. “So I think it was December or early January of this year that I went across the sidewalk here at the president's office, and I said, ‘This is going to happen.’ I gave her a fair warning, and we started moving through the process.”

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‘Left-wing training center’

Once the bill passed the Legislature, Gov. Reynolds not only signed it, she got involved — reaching out to prospects for the center’s advisory council, all of whom accepted.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation to help improve higher education in Iowa,” Reynolds said at the event Saturday. “Whether this state is your home or whether this cause is one you're deeply committed to … We're honored to have the best and brightest minds contribute to this great university.”

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Reynolds spoke of the new center’s potential to benefit not just Iowa but the nation.

“This launch isn't just an opportunity to protect freedom of speech, it's a chance to lead America in the exchange of ideas, to further the mission of our state's oldest university, and to celebrate the history of our country,” she said. “Because self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated. It's why this center is so important.”

Barker shared examples from his time on the Board of Regents in showing the problem with stifled debate in self-governance.

“As a regent, I voted against multimillion-dollar projects that I considered unnecessary, a waste,” he said. “But after one of those votes, I was promptly removed from the board's property and facilities — taking me out of discussions on these projects. Now I might have been right, I might have been wrong on that particular issue. But I think silencing debate in that way is not the right way to bring about good governance.”

He pointed to France in the 1960s and ‘70s for an example of a failed higher education monoculture, when a new university was built outside Paris in response to student demonstrations.

“It became an ungovernable liberal bastion, a haven for radical Marxist communist and Maoist professors that abandoned academic and financial standards and valued political agitation over values and scholarship,” Barker said. “The situation was so serious that the French government decided the new university had to be extinguished. And during the summer break in 1980, in the middle of the night, government bulldozers quickly demolished the entire campus, leaving no trace.”

Barker said he isn’t suggesting Iowa take similar measures. But Rufo did harken back to that story in his remarks — sharing of his experience on the board for the public New College of Florida, which Gov. Ron DeSantis overhauled in 2023 into a conservative institution.

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“It was a left-wing training center, just like that college that was demolished in France,” Rufo said, reporting DeSantis told its new board to “go take over this college, replace all of the leadership and turn it into the first classical American public university in the United States.”

Rufo said the team of trustees was ready for protesters and media backlash — with thousands of news articles “attacking our initiative.”

“But (DeSantis) said, ‘Don't get distracted. Keep pushing, keep fighting, and understand that the public can see through this, the public support is what we're doing,” Rufo said.

In following that advice, Rufo said he learned a few things — including that an institution’s current leadership will resist and deny, like when he asked New College’s provost to share some of the problems on her campus.

“She said, ‘There are no problems here’,” Rufo said to audience laughter. “I said, ‘Well that's interesting, because I just got the Board of Education’s stat sheet, and actually on all of the metrics from the state of Florida, New College ranks dead last on all of them. Why do you think that is?’ She said, ‘Those aren’t the metrics that matter to us here’.”

In dismantling that campus’ norms, Rufo said they stripped away its DEI department, gender studies program, left-wing coursework — despite faculty pushback asserting academic freedom.

“It took some decisive action and leadership, and the governor demonstrated it, legislators demonstrated it, we demonstrated it in our own small way,” Rufo said. “And then we got down to business — fired the president, fired the provost … We abolished the DEI program. We shut down the gender studies program.”

Recalling a conversation he had with a gender studies faculty, Rufo on Saturday said he asked her to tell him the difference between a man and a woman.

“And she's hemming and hawing,” Rufo said. “And I said, ‘Hey, look. We require a basic level of academic rigor, and if you can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman, I'm not sure we're making the cut here.”

Rufo challenged those in attendance to remember their commitment to Iowans — who he said largely agree with them and trust them to use state dollars according to their will and best interests.

“And I fear that the universities have been violating that trust for many, many decades,” he said. “So be unapologetic. Assert your power and authority. And remind the people that these institutions are not their fiefdom. But they’re own loan. And if they don't do the right thing, they don't uphold the public good, they don't respect the work of the Legislature, they're out.”

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Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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