Press Release: Iowa Higher Education Coalition Rejects Federal Move for Ideological Control Over Campuses
The University of Iowa Chapter, as part of the Iowa Higher Education Coalition, called for the rejection of the Trump Administration’s “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education.”
The compact proposes to tie federal funding to agreeing to the compact’s rules in eight areas, including: college admissions, academic freedom and freedom of speech on campuses and the existence of academic units deemed “against conservative ideas,” faculty and administrative hiring, “institutional neutrality,” student grades, binary definitions of student gender, a five-year freeze on tuition rates, and limits on international students.
“The compact would subject our Iowa-operated public universities to extortion, based on demonstrating partisan loyalty to the federal government,” said Christopher Martin, president of United Faculty, the faculty union at the University of Northern Iowa. “Iowans would lose control of the universities. That’s a terrible deal for Iowa taxpayers.”
“We all want Iowa’s public universities to be places where students and faculty - regardless of political orientation - are not just free but encouraged to pursue their own intellectual discovery and to contribute to a campus culture devoted to excellence, curiosity and tolerance,” said Cullen Padgett-Walsh, president of Iowa State University’s AAUP Chapter.“Bullying from the federal government isn’t the way to get there.”