About a month ago, my friend sent me an article written by Mark Bauerlein, emeritus professor at Emory University, celebrating the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom in an article titled “How Red States Are Replacing Woke College Classes With Real Education.” Here are excerpts from Bauerlein’s article:
“Things are happening in higher education, and conservatives have good reason for optimism, though many victories may be reversed with a change in political leadership. One theater of action usually goes unnoticed: general education.”
“This summer the Iowa legislature passed and Governor Kim Reynolds signed a law mandating that college students in the state take one course in U.S. history and one course in American government. Courses shall be introductory and straightforward, covering central and momentous features of our past and present. The law stipulates, too, that courses at [the] University of Iowa shall be designed and run by the new Center for Intellectual Freedom on campus, not by history, political science, or related departments (I am on the board of the center.)”
“To appreciate what Iowa politicians have done, consider what general education requirements are for. The model goes back many decades, to when colleges and universities began to divide into disciplines in which students would major then graduate with a specialized preparation.”
Bauerlein goes on to point out that at both the University of Iowa and Iowa State University, the state’s two largest public institutions of higher learning, numerous courses meet the requirements of “general education” without being focused on U.S. history or American government. Some are concerned that Hawkeye and Cyclone graduates aren’t receiving the right instruction when it comes to civics education.
“The new law requiring broad surveys of U.S. history and government curtails it. No longer can students get a degree and not encounter the Bill of Rights, the Civil War, and Pilgrims and Puritans, and the Depression. Traditions, actions, and expressions that make up our history and polity will not be random knowledge. Courses that focus on one identity group of pursue tendentious topics (‘Racism in…’) are disallowed. An American core is preserved, the foundations of our republic taught and tested.”
It should be pointed out that many believe the reason the Iowa Legislature passed the law Bauerlein refers to in his article was due to the fact that Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom was seriously under-enrolled during the first year of their existence.
It seems the University of Iowa learner was more interested in taking history and government courses from the university’s history and political science departments – with hundreds of years of experience.
Then, in September, citing a vote of no confidence in the Iowa Board of Regents, including Regent President Robert Cramer, 11 out of 26 of the Center’s advisory members stepped down, including most of the out-of-state representatives. Bauerlein currently remains on the advisory board.
The mass resignations followed a power struggle over governance, control of the center, and budget and travel oversight. Cramer called for a “reset” of the center.
In early October, the Center’s Interim Director Luciano I. de Castro delivered a report to Iowa’s governor, General Assembly, and Board of Regents:
The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that,
“[de Castro] states the center is on the path to becoming a ‘lost opportunity’ for true reform, with its opponents stymying its independence in day-to-day operations and exerting a level of control he believed wasn’t lawful.”
“’University of Iowa administrators have used their influence over the Board of Regents to hinder the Center’s operations at nearly every stage of its development,’ de Castro wrote as his central finding in the report.”
And then, just today, Board of Regents President Cramer announced a new permanent director, while making the following comments:
“’We have a very different view of what has happened in the last year [than de Castro], and a different view of how we should move forward,’ Cramer said. ‘So our new director is ready to make that shift, and will very soon have a very different story to tell.’”
The new director for Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom is Carson Holloway, currently serving as the chair of the University of Omaha’s department of political science and interim chair of the philosophy department.
What a mess.
Last checked, the University of Iowa has a department of history and a department of political science. For hundreds of years in Iowa City, those departments were charged with teaching courses in U.S. history and American government. Now, a Republican legislature wants to change that.
Bauerlein is probably correct that courses have probably multiplied in history and political science over the years, not unlike other university departments. But creating (and paying for) a new center to do what existing academic departments should be doing just doesn’t make sense.
And all of this hysteria for change is coming from a right-leaning, Republican-dominated Iowa legislature. Instead of directing University of Iowa leadership to evaluate coursework within two of their academic departments, the party long known for fiscal conservatism and limited government seems to have forgotten their standards.
But then again, that party is led by a President who would rather comment on a guy’s ass, and design golf courses, than figure out Iran, Ukraine, and China.
Ridiculous.
Til tomorrow. SVB
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