Pre-Festivus gathering at the University of Iowa blames liberals, faculty, all that gender stuff

The University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom got off the ground with an early airing of the grievances

The University of Iowa’s Schaeffer Hall. (Photo by Lyle Muller/IowaWatch/Investigate Midwest)

You know you are off to a good start as a Center for Intellectual Freedom when your first question is: what is wrong with higher education and why?

It is not a bad question. Higher education always has something wrong that it needs to examine. That is why professors are hired to fix them.

But, in this case, skipping right past the question of whether or not something actually is wrong with higher education was a short cut at culprits seen by the University of Iowa’s newest center’s kick-off last week: horrific liberalism, faculty who stifle conservative ideas in debate, and misplaced university priorities.

“Our mechanism, our approach to doing that, I think, is pursuing the truth, discovering knowledge, disseminating knowledge, that will change society, that will improve it,” John Criscione, professor of biochemical engineering at Texas A&M University, said in the Iowa center’s first colloquium Friday, Dec. 5. The colloquium, basically conservative educators who feel they always are unheard, started a two-day kick-off for the controversial, Legislature-mandated intellectual freedom center.

“If we pick a particular approach, we decide society needs to change in this way, I don’t think we can have credibility,” Iowa Capital Dispatch’s Brooklyn Draisey quoted Criscione saying the Centers Strategy Colloquium at Old Capitol’s Senate Chamber in Iowa City.

It was a little bit of Festivus for the Rest of Them party, the academic edition. Speaker after speaker took turns blaming higher education for ills they have with being educated in college.

The appearance by Criscione is explainable, given the bias that created the center’s existence. For example, he supports a controversial new Texas A&M requirement, adopted in November by the A&M system’s regents, that courses advocating “race or gender ideology, sexual orientation, or gender identity” must have presidential requirement at system campuses.

Ostensibly, that review should include any course that deals with man-woman relationships and stating or assuming only two genders — male and female — exist. Same for plantation owners thinking Black slaves’ role in life was enslavement; folks who think the Civil War was about states’ rights only instead of the slavery for which the states wanted the rights. Probably not, though.

Texas A&M University finance professor Adam Kolasinski also favors the new A&M rule so he, too, was vital to the Iowa colloquium. In Iowa City, he blamed the liberal left, critical race theory, abusive crackdowns on conservative speech and, according to Draisey’s story, “over-discrimination against whites.”

Thank goodness of the news coverage of this two-day intellectual freedom that was so great at your public university that an appearance by Gov. Kim Reynolds on Saturday was not listed on her public schedule. The Iowa Board of Regents posted a colloquium schedule the day before it started, on Dec. 4.

The university is in the district Iowa state Rep. David Jacoby, D-Coralville, represents and he is a member of the House Higher Education Committee but he says he had to beg to get into the colloquium. “Took 6 phone calls, 4 emails, and repeated texts to be allowed in this ‘public’ meeting,” Jacoby wrote Friday on Facebook.

Photos are part of the screen grab of Rep. David Jacoby’s Facebook post.

I felt like I needed a shower after I left,” Jessica Roman, of North Liberty, wrote on Jacoby’s post. “I have never sat through such an echo chamber of dudes throwing out racist, sexist, bigoted, hateful trash in the name of ‘intellectual and educational freedom’ as that ‘panel discussion.’”

I asked Roman if she heard any liberal voices in the sessions she attended Friday. “Liberal? Not even close,” she wrote back.

And therein lies a problem with the center. It is an ideological creation of the Iowa Legislature, reporting to the state regents instead of University of Iowa leaders. Liberal is bad and the center needs to preserve and promote conservative, most Iowa Board of Regents members — led as of Dec. 3 by former The Family Leader chair Robert Cramer — believe and, thus, is their focus for their center. Cramer’s regent web bio leaves The Family Leader business out.

The center’s purpose, handed down by the Republican-led Legislature in the law establishing the center, is to “conduct teaching and research in the historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped the American constitutional order and society.”

University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson and other top university officers did not attend the two-day celebration. Why should they? It is not an academic center in which they have any part operating. They were chastised for their absence by speaker and conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who also said ideas like “ideologies, particular transgender ideology” and academic institutions are to blame for all of the nation’s problems, including the murder of his friend, Charlie Kirk.

For her part, Gov. Reynolds delivered an uplifting message for those inclined to agree with her on the need for this center. “We’re laying the foundation for a new generation of Americans who are knowledgeable about the history of the country, appreciative of its values and traditions, and above all, committed to its legacy of freedom,” The Daily Iowan’s Grace Bartlett reported.

“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,” Reynolds said in comments The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller reported.

Before completing your thoughts on this, give some credence where is due. A wide variety of thought needs to be taught at state universities. People who have conservative views deserve to be heard and should not feel uncomfortable and threatened. Challenged, yes. Accosted, no. I have talked with politically conservative people who value their education but put up with a lot they should not have had to endure for speaking their views.

I also have talked with people with liberal slants whom feel threatened by police eager to beat them or fire tear gas into a gathering. In Iowa, they feel threatened by a law that that lets drivers off the hook if they strike protesters blocking traffic with a car. The law says the driver must being using due care when hitting a protester but that can be a judgment call. A new anti-semitism law in Iowa has some college students worrying whether or not their public-facing use of the word “genocide” puts them at risk.

An academic institution’s purpose is to find truth, and sometimes truth doesn’t have two sides. Having AIDS is bad — that was a flashpoint almost 40 years ago, you will remember. So is COVID. The Earth is not flat and it revolves around the sun, not the other way around. It evolved over billions of years, not six days. Climate change is affecting many facets of our society but more study is needed.

And, assassinating people because of what they are saying not only is abhorrent, it has affected how college students are thinking about school.

A new survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) found that one-half of the 2,028 students surveyed Oct. 3 through Oct. 31, 2025, on college campuses, including 204 at Utah Valley University where Kirk was assassinated, say they are less comfortable attending or hosting controversial public events on their campus. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

A little more than one-half said political violence is inflicted by people from a range of political views, not just one side.

Overall, 45% of the students interviewed said they are afraid to talk about controversial topics in class. About the same — 43% — said they were afraid to do so in common campus spaces, while 48% said they re braid of doing so on social media, since Kirk’s death, the survey showed. FIRE reported that close to “one in five students say they are now less comfortable attending class.”

And this: “Compared to this past spring, moderate and conservative students are less accepting of other students using aggressive or violent protest tactics. Liberal students, in contrast, did not shift their views in the same way.”

So, yes, problems exists on college campuses. Time will tell if Iowa’s new Center for Intellectual Freedom promotes exploring all facets of the truth. The center’s efforts would have more credibility, though, if it truly explored how different takes on what people perceive to be reality warp our sense of truth.

For that to happen, it needs to do more than just serve as a haven for conservative students who feel badly because they lost a heated argument.

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