DEI disobedience triggers Iowa Republicans

This past week, Gov. Kim Reynolds was “appalled.”

Was it Iowa’s dirty water? You can’t be serious.

How about underfunded public schools? Nope

Nursing home residents in danger due to lack of staffing? No.

Parents having to take their kids out of state for mental health treatment? Budget problems spawned by billions in tax cuts? Gun deaths? Iowa’s worsening brain drain? Lousy economic numbers?

Not a chance.

No, what appalled the governor is a University of Iowa employee caught on tape, without her knowledge, who dared to describe disobedience to the state’s nuking of diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus.

The video was shown on Fox News. How embarrassing.

“Maybe February, March, our communications person came in and was like, ‘Hey, we have to redo our websites for the regents to take off diversity, equity, inclusion — anything like that, any like buzzwords’,” said the employee, identified in the video as UI Leadership and Student Organization Development Assistant Director Andrea Tinoco, according to reporting by The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller.

“So they swept our websites,” Tinoco said. “But we are essentially finding ways to operate around it. So that was our solution.”

She also said she still is going to say DEI in her classroom. And the Board of Regents are “just a bunch of white people.” Fact check — true.

“I’m appalled by the remarks made in this video by a University of Iowa employee who blatantly admits to defying DEI restrictions I signed into law on May 9, 2024,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Tinoco is now on administrative leave.

Maybe you think this is just an employee bristling at an edict from on high. The kind of talk that happens over bad office coffee in break rooms across the nation.

But no, this is blatant blasphemy of the highest order. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs are now against the law at state universities and elsewhere. Republican lawmakers believe supporting students of color and encouraging a diverse student body are tantamount to racism against white guys.

In a state that’s 85% white, but “reverse racism” against whites is rampant. You cannot see the oppression, but trust me, it’s happening. Who will help these poor fellas?

What did the Legislature, governor and Board of Regents expect when they took a chain saw to universities’ culture and mission? Did they really think there would be universal adherence to such a misguided, damaging and purely political policy?

Did they really believe threatening everyone would work wonders? Or curtailing free speech? Or scrubbing all traces of DEI from websites? Or turning students and others into informants? Or compelling acceptance through intimidation?

People do not respond well to coercion. They don’t like being told their values are unacceptable. They’re likely to chafe at authoritarian rule.

So, they will find ways to “operate around it.”

The law is the law, but resisting unjust laws is as American as free speech. Or it used to be.

Now we’ve got secret surveillance, by somebody.

Your speech may be monitored or recorded. And any infractions against the new regime will have dire consequences. We might parade you through campus and yell “Shame!” at you.

Tinoco’s case has been handed to Attorney General Brenda Bird. She is fresh from dropping her lawsuit against the Winneshiek County sheriff for a Facebook post saying his office would not assist ICE agents who are violating the Constitution. That sort of speech also will get you into big trouble.

Fortunately, if universities and regents are unable to rule with an iron fist, the Legislature stands ready to help.

“Taxpayers are seeing, firsthand, just how embedded the DEI bureaucracy has become at our institutions of higher education,” said Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, the Legislature’s chief DEI slayer, in a statement.

“However, the persisting issues at University of Iowa are a direct result of the board's abdication of oversight to the universities themselves, and a lack of clear direction from University of Iowa leadership,” Collins said.

“The House Committee on Higher Education stands ready to act if additional steps need to be taken to rid these ideologically driven programs from our state's universities,” he said.

Well, that’s a relief. But lawmakers are not ridding universities of ideologically driven programs. They’re just replacing one ideology with their own conservative cultural crusade. They scoff at the continuing reality of racism in America.

And they talk about installing a “merit” based system unlike the old DEI system, where people advanced only because of the color of their skin, not merit. It’s fun to dub people of color and women “DEI hires.” Hilarious.

That’s a good example of the racism they claim doesn’t exist.

The truth of DEI’s benefits have been twisted and manipulated into a political caricature that bears no likeness to reality. They want a world where no conservative must feel uncomfortable with racism, in history or the present. They think they can erase it as easily as scrubbing a website for naughty words.

It’s appalling, to be sure, that our leaders spend so much time tilting at culture war windmills and seeking revenge on the libs while real problems demand action.

But this is what we voted for. This is the sort of state we want. Vindictive and vicious. Autocratic and abhorrent. Meaner and dumber.

Now, have a great semester!

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com