Emails to University of Iowa show unanimous support for hiring Leach

Emails to University of Iowa College of Law Dean Gail Agrawal and UI President Sally Mason after it was announced Jim Leach would join the university as a visiting professor were unanimous in support of hiring the former congressman.

About 15 emails to Agrawal and Mason from UI law faculty, Iowa lawyers and other officials show enthusiastic support for Leach joining the faculty as a visiting professor and as the UI Chair in Public Affairs. The emails were among the documents released Tuesday to The Gazette, along with Leach's signed offer letters, in response to a public records request.

Mason announced last month that Leach, who represented Iowa for 30 years in the U.S. Congress, will begin on campus full time starting Aug. 1. Leach will be a visiting law professor and the first UI Chair in Public Affairs for a three-year renewable term, with an annual salary of $240,000. The post does not confer tenure.

Emails to Agrawal and Mason praised the hire as a terrific decision and lauded Leach as a respected statesman.

"We are thrilled!" Agrawal wrote in response to one email regarding the appointment.

The documents provided also show that extending the visiting professorship to Leach was approved "unanimously and enthusiastically" by the law faculty during a special meeting May 17.

The offer letters from the university to Leach show that the visiting law professor position pays $150,000 per year. The UI Chair in Public Affairs post pays an additional $90,000 per year from UI Foundation funds, according to the documents. The chair position also comes with an annual discretionary stipend of $10,000 to support scholarly activities such as work-related travel or publications, the letter states.

Leach is expected to teach two law school offerings of his choice each academic year, present special lectures in his areas of expertise, work with the UI Center for Human Rights and advise the law school in efforts to secure field placements for students in Washington D.C., according to the documents.

Leach recently retired as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a post to which President Barack Obama appointed him in 2009. Before that, he was a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and interim director of the Institute of Politics and lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Before his positions in higher education, Leach served Iowa for 30 years as a Republican representative in Congress, where he chaired the Banking and Financial Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.