The state regent who wanted the Legislature out of higher ed policy
Marvin Pomerantz was a Republican big wig whom many argued with when it came to public policy, but he advocated strongly for regent, not legislative, control of Iowa's state universities
Photo by Lyle Muller
It seemed like a good story.
Several members of Iowa’s Board of Regents, which I was covering for The Gazette, from Cedar Rapids but with a strong Iowa City presence, said the state’s public universities needed to be audited for cost savings and efficient use of funds. This could result in program cuts or moving funds from programs deemed to be weak to those that were strong, the regents warned.
It was 1988, and I led my Gazette story with that news. The next morning, my editor pointed out in an “instructional” (rhetorical air quotes) way that The Des Moines Register had led its regents coverage with big raises given to faculty. Whatever. The Register reporter told me her editor that morning had pointed out, also in an “instructional” way, that The Gazette had let with the audit.
Pretty soon, the audit, by Peat, Marwick, and Main Co., was big news across Iowa as taxpayers, elected officials, academics and anyone else who cared about the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa freaked out about what kind of damage the audit would inflict.
It inflicted damage, indeed, to programs like the University of Iowa dental hygiene program, which was closed in 1995 during a court fight, and its four faculty members and students. Three of the faculty members sued for sex discrimination, lack of due process, retaliation and First Amendment rights violations and won in state court before the ruling was overturned in 1996 in a U.S. District Court case I covered in Des Moines.
Despite hits on some academic programs, all three state universities arguably accomplished some right-sizing of their academic programs, as they did after a similar 2014 study by Deloitte Consulting LLP.
During the Peat, Marwick, and Main audit, referred to in shorthand talk as Peat Marwick audit, the regents kept at bay a large collection of Iowans itching to get at the universities: the state Legislature. Leading the regents’ defense was their president, the conservative, opinionated, Des Moines-area businessman, big-time Republican influencer and financial supporter Marvin Pomerantz.
Pomerantz often talk about how he wanted to keep the Legislature from meddling with the universities. Pomerantz, who died in 2008, believed that the regents should control the state universities, not legislators subject to short-term political whims.
Marvin Pomerantz; Regents, State of Iowa photo
The minutes of an April 17-18, 1991, regents meeting captures his thoughts. “President Pomerantz stated there was great concern on the Regent campuses and beyond regarding state budget deliberations,” the minutes read. Iowa’s three public universities “are on the track of being among the best in the nation. It becomes imperative that the legislators not do anything in the interest of the short term to detract from making progress according to the strategic plans. People of the state of Iowa expect and demand very high quality in higher education. He said higher education sets the tone for the entire educational system in the state. It is imperative the legislature remembers that education is perhaps the highest priority of this state. When the revenues are divided there should be a recognition of that priority.”
You read that right. Education should get priority when funding decisions need to be made, this conservative Republican argued during his time with the regents. In turn, he said, the universities had to be as efficient and successful as possible.
So here we are in 2025, when the Iowa Legislature’s majority Republicans, responding to Iowans who voted them into office, want to root out whatever they think is objectionable about the state universities. They say they want a school of intellectual freedom at that troublesome, in their view, University of Iowa and an end to required instruction at state universities about the reasons for diversity, equity and inclusion. Legislators in power want the state regents to review all of the universities’ academic programs and their general education requirements.
Who doesn’t favor efficiency and intellectual freedom, right? Except that, these moves are not about that. Rather, they smack of what the American Association of University Professors found in a study is part of a right-wing effort to discredit universities because they teach too much about the world around us. You know. The diverse part that doesn’t get treated fairly or is included in opportunities. This effort’s aim is turning universities into conservative nests, where facts that don’t align with an certain ideology can be ignored in favor of dressed up, romanticized versions of the American dream.
“This legislative onslaught has been understood as simply an effect of America’s highly polarized politics,” states the AAUP May 30, 2024, report titled Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023. “However, as this white paper demonstrates, this legislation has been pushed by a network of right-wing and libertarian think tanks, working closely with Republican politicians, to manufacture a culture war backlash against educators and academic institutions.”
More, at length, but so you can read the full warning:
“In response to Black Lives Matter protests and greater LGBTQ+ visibility, a handful of well funded think tanks have manufactured a backlash against K-12 and higher education. Since 2020, a small group of conservative and libertarian think tanks have intensely scrutinized teachers, faculty, and educational institutions, producing an ‘echo chamber’ of reports, op-eds, conferences and public events, media appearances, email newsletters, and talking points that helped coalesce the backlash. In doing so they shaped the prevalent narrative that faculty are ‘liberal,’ biased, Marxist, ‘woke,’ and overtly hostile to free speech and conservative views. Many of these think tanks also wrote model legislation that bans so-called ‘divisive concepts,’ curtails campus diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and seeks to influence academic curriculum and programming.”
By the way, if Iowa legislators are concerned about efficiency they should not want Iowa’s community colleges to consider being four-year colleges. And, if they still favor school choice and private colleges in Iowa, they would not propose a bill that punishes Iowa students who want to attend a private college that has a diversity, equity and inclusion program. The bill doesn’t read that way. It states: “An Act prohibiting private institutions of higher education that participate in the Iowa tuition grant program from establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion offices.”
In other words, college students no longer could chose to attend the private school of their choice — a big theme with Iowa Republicans when it comes to education and others levels — if they need funding from the Iowa Tuition Grant Program, which provides Iowans at private colleges in the state $6,000 to $8,500 annually to support that choice when it comes to college.
Bringing the rant back to point:
I will not pretend to know what Marvin Pomerantz would say today about the current political barking at the state universities. People who do that usually do not know and are projecting their own views onto someone who has passed on. Plus, politicians’ views sail with political winds. Former Gov. Terry Branstad worked closely with Pomerantz on the state universities’ direction when Pomerantz was president, yet said earlier this year he favors the Legislature’s bill that would establish a school of intellectual freedom in Iowa City.
Pomerantz had the right idea three decades ago when he said the Iowa Legislature should not run the state’s public universities. Too much ideology from too many cooks with little understanding by many of them of how an education from a public university can be derived.
For certain, 11 out-of-state think tanks identified1 by the AAUP should not have a strong influence over what we do on Iowa’s college campuses, yet that is what we have with their surrogates in Des Moines.
Lyle Muller is a University of Iowa graduate. He is board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, former editor of The Gazette (Cedar Rapids), and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper.
The 11 think tanks the AAUP identifies in its report, Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023, are: the Center for Renewing America (CRA), the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), the Claremont Institute, the Martin Center in North Carolina, the American Council on Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and the National Association of Scholars.