The National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance are delighted that Iowa state legislators, especially Representative Taylor Collins jointly with his fellow members of the House Committee on Higher Education, have introduced at least fourteen bills to reform public K-12 and postsecondary education—and we are honored that significant numbers of these bills appear to have been informed by our model legislation and/or by our research. These bills jointly seek to:

  1. restore the civic mission and content of Iowa’s public K-12 and higher education, especially by reform of the public university General Education Requirements;
  2. require transparency about the syllabi of public university courses;
  3. establish an autonomous School within the University of Iowa free of the radical establishment that controls American higher education and dedicated to free inquiry;
  4. require transparency and accountability about public higher education finances, including its dependence on foreign sources;
  5. remove administrative programs and policies that impose discriminatory ideologies such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” on public universities;
  6. prevent radicalized accrediting organizations from vetoing these reforms; and
  7. give the state legislature the means to review academic programs at public universities and determine which are structurally radicalized.

Education reformers throughout America seek these goals, which provide practical means to remove academic bureaucracies’ subordination of American higher education to the pursuit of radical political ends, and to restore American higher education to rigor and excellence, the search for truth, the study of Western civilization, and the cultivation of civic virtue. Iowa’s state legislators will put Iowa into the forefront of the movement for national education reform if they pass these bills—which we respectfully urge them to do.

We are, as we say, honored that Iowa state legislators have judged that our model bills can inform them as they pursue the goals of higher education reform that we share. The bills that appear to be informed by our model legislation and research include

Iowa state legislators also have introduced a range of bills which are not part of our model legislation—although, after we review these bills, we may add versions of them to our range of model bills. These bills include:

We believe that all these bills are necessary for academic reform and well-tailored to achieve their objectives. Iowa state legislators of course should and will examine these bills closely and modify them as their collective judgment dictates. But we believe these bills are excellent as is, and that they will marvelously improve Iowa education if they are passed substantially in their current form.

We note that representatives of Iowa public K-12 and higher education surely will protest against these reforms, as infringements on their autonomy, or by other such defenses. We urge Iowa’s state legislators to recollect that they have delegated, not granted, autonomy to public K-12 and higher education institutions, and that they have not only the right but the duty to intervene to restore these institutions to their proper mission. We also urge Iowa’s state legislators to recollect that these institutions, and the personnel who staff them, have been derelict in their duty for generations. These institutions never should have allowed the institutionalization of radical politicization throughout their administrative programs and policies—yet this is what they have done. Iowa’s public educational institutions, especially their institutions of public higher education, no longer are capable of enacting or enforcing the reforms needed to remove the corrupting politicization that they now believe to be the normal state and purpose of higher education.

Iowa state legislators can and should act themselves to reform public K-12 and higher education—not least by means of this excellent range of education reform bills. The legislators’ judgment is better than that of the systematically corrupted educational establishment, which has forfeited the public’s trust.

Photo by gnagel on Adobe Stock