Iowa House lawmakers clash over legislation restricting DEI at public, private colleges

Yahoo

19-03-2025

Rep. Henry Stone, R-Forest City, spoke on legislation prohibiting funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in Iowa, alongside prohibiting DEI efforts at community colleges and private colleges participating in the Iowa Tuition Grant during floor debate in the Iowa House March 18, 2025. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
When debating the first of many pieces of legislation targeting diversity, equity and inclusion Tuesday in the Iowa House, Rep. Beth Wessel-Kroeschell said she's already heard from individuals and groups seeing the negative impacts of stripping away DEI at Iowa colleges and universities.
An Iowa State University professor was asked to stop requiring students to watch a video on biochemist Percy Julian, an African American, Wessel-Kroeschell said. The teacher had used the story to get students thinking about how 'societal ideas impact scientific progress,' the Ames Democrat said.
'This bill and others that we will be discussing today take us 100 steps backwards,' Wessel-Kroeschell said. 'The diversity, equity, inclusion ban has already gone too far.'
Advocates of the legislation argued DEI programs were divisive.
'A better name for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, in my opinion, would be adversity, inequity and exclusion, because that is what these programs do,' Rep. Steven Holt said. 'Indoctrinating young people to see everything through the prism of race is incredibly destructive — creating adversity between people, inequity for those who do not fit the narrative and exclusion for those who do not agree.'
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Members of the Iowa House of Representatives passed a number of bills aimed at DEI Tuesday evening, including amended legislation that would create a new center for intellectual freedom at the University of Iowa, as well as bills that would bar state entities, community colleges and private universities from maintaining DEI offices and positions and state university requirements for DEI-related education or participation in programming.
House File 269 would prohibit public universities from requiring or incentivizing education in DEI or critical race theory-related content for students as a prerequisite for earning a degree, with exceptions, and also bars employees from being required or incentivized to participate in similar activities or programs.
The House passed an amendment offered by Holt, R-Denison, floor manager of the bill, that he said was brought forward by the Iowa Board of Regents. It struck language in the legislation defining DEI and critical race theory-related content as connected to 'critical theory, systemic racism, institutional racism, anti-racism, microaggressions, systemic bias, implicit bias, unconscious bias, intersectionality, social justice, cultural competence, allyship, race-based reparations, race-based privilege, race or gender-based diversity, race or gender-based equity, or race or gender-based inclusion.'
Rep. Megan Srinivas, D-Des Moines, introduced an amendment exempting health care students and providers seeking continuing education from the bill. She argued that medical students need to know how a patient's race, sex and other characteristics affect the prevalence of certain diseases. The amendment failed.
Calling the legislation 'one of the most misrepresented bills' he's seen in his time as a lawmaker, Holt said DEI and critical race theory topics aren't being banned from instruction, but are rather being stopped from becoming a requirement to graduate. DEI programs seek to divide people, he said, and gave examples of teaching white people they are oppressors because they are white and people of color they are oppressed.
The legislation passed 63-34.
House Democrats joined Wessel-Kroeschell in opposing House File 269, as well as other DEI-focused legislation that passed out of the chamber.
Rep. Mary Madison, D-West Des Moines, said during debate that, if passed, legislation to change academic teaching requirements, general education standards and more would essentially whitewash the lessons taught by Iowa universities.
Referencing House File 295, which would prohibit higher education accrediting bodies from taking negative actions against state universities and community colleges for following, or refusing to violate, state law, Madison said the legislation will make Iowa colleges less competitive and 'potentially unaccredited, all while silencing discussion about race, gender and social structures that are fundamental to well rounded education.'
'These bills are not about improving education or governance,' Madison said. 'They are about censorship, exclusion and erasing important conversations that prepare students for the real world, real people.'
House File 295 passed out of the House with a 65-32 vote.
Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, introduced an amendment to House File 856 adding community and private colleges to the population of state entities and local government bodies that would be prohibited from spending any money, state-allocated or otherwise, on founding or funding diversity, equity and inclusion offices and hiring DEI officers. The amendment passed.
The portion of the amendment referencing private universities would put their Iowa Tuition Grant eligibility on the line if they do not shutter their offices, similar to legislation currently on the House debate calendar.
Rep. Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said the legislation as amended would punish students for the actions of the institution they chose to attend by stripping away their Iowa Tuition Grant funding, which goes directly to the student, not the college.
'Why are we, the Legislature, punishing children and young people who want to go to college by telling them they can't pick a college that has a position that's different than yours?' Konfrst said. 'That is not fair and it is not right.'
Rep. Henry Stone, R-Forest City, was floor manager of the bill and did not yield to questions from House Democrats, who took umbrage with what they described as an overly broad definition of DEI potential impacts on Iowa's students and local departments. His reasoning for this was that he said no one approached him with questions on the bill before it made it to the House floor.
Echoing comments made throughout debate about how DEI divides rather than unites, Stone said what is taught through the acronym teaches people to judge based on what is on the surface, like skin color, and interact with them based on those characteristics, rather than getting to know them.
'Getting rid of DEI will help our nation heal and grow together with one another, instead of forcing people to believe that you should be judged by the color of your skin,' Stone said.
The bill passed with a vote of 61-37.
House File 401 would establish general education requirements for state universities and lays out criteria for subjects students must take to graduate, including English, math and statistics, natural and social sciences and western and American heritage. According to the bill, course content cannot 'distort significant historical events or include any curriculum or other material that teaches identity politics or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States of America or the state of Iowa.'
Holt said the bill is 'fundamentally important' for teaching U.S. youth about the country's founding principles and where they came from, as well as helping them to improve in fundamental skills like English.
'If our country is to be fought for, those doing the fighting must know the precious principles that are at stake,' Holt said.
The legislation passed 61-36.
House File 437 would, as amended, establish a center for intellectual freedom at the University of Iowa and direct it to, in its own work and through collaborations with centers for civic education at Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, offer a course on American history and civil government and programming on the topics of free speech and civil discourse, Collins said.
A previous version of the bill would have the UI establish a school of intellectual freedom within its college of liberal arts and sciences.
The legislation passed 60-37.
Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, D-Hiawatha, said it's ironic that the chamber discussed intellectual freedom in the wake of trying to ban DEI and amidst the erasure of intellectual freedom across the country as a result of federal government actions.
'This bill is a farce,' Wichtendahl said. 'The center is a farce. This government is a farce.'
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