Republicans target university inclusion

Republicans in the Iowa legislature are continuing to exert their control and their will over our higher education institutions. Their latest intention seems to be: Let’s obliterate our state's welcoming and nurturing stance toward university faculty and students from minority populations, and those with multicultural and lower-income backgrounds.

To that end, House Speaker Pat Grassley's newly established "Iowa House Higher Education Committee" has set about its work to ensure mediocrity in our universities--and, ultimately, in our workplaces and communities. The lawmakers have decreed an end to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion -- or DEI. Instead, they are stamping that out and say they are focused instead on what they call MEI -- merit, excellence, and intelligence. They apparently have not considered that excellence and innovation have historically sprung from diversity, or that a society that values equity and inclusion has the best chance to achieve a strong, vibrant economy.

Doing away with a welcoming, supportive, and nurturing environment at our institutions of higher education is directing our state backward, and is the wrong way to go.

Judith Pim

Mount Vernon