Editorial: Don't blow up diversity efforts at Iowa’s public universities

Attention in recent days has rightly focused on a pair of degrading laws that took effect in Iowa with Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signature. Doctors’ and families’ thoughtful plans for gender-affirming medical care were instantly blown up. And routine trips to the restroom became potentially stressful ordeals for transgender schoolchildren, each visit a reminder of the disgust and distrust some state leaders exhibit toward them.

But this Legislature is full of ideas to make Iowa worse, and it’s worth sparing a thought for one of them that takes aim at the state’s public universities.

House File 616 would force the schools to dismantle their departments that attend to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, on campus. The bill’s supporters say DEI initiatives and training programs can safely be done away with because they are just a cover for brainwashing young adults into supporting extremist progressive politics. “Woke ideology,” for short.

It’s a revealing stance. The mission of these offices is to promote equal opportunity, welcoming environments and awareness of different backgrounds — goals that would seem hard to argue against. But rather than directly confronting concerns about how such work is done, House Republicans' remedy is for the universities to stop promoting equal opportunity, welcoming environments and awareness of different backgrounds.

Rep. Taylor Collins, the Mediapolis Republican who is leading the bill, has said its goal is to “begin dismantling the DEI/CRT bureaucracies at our regent institutions,” lumping in critical race theory. There's scant evidence his concern is based on any problem specific to Iowa; large portions of the bill language mirror a model published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

This nuclear response squashes any reasonable debate over how DEI programs could be better. Scrutiny is more than fair, especially for administrators receiving large taxpayer-funded salaries. And setting measurable goals for “equity” and “inclusion” and judging performance toward those goals is a challenge. DEI is usually traced to the civil rights movement in the 1960s; some critics allege that it has since evolved to serve primarily to protect businesses from litigation over alleged discrimination, rather than to actually decrease it.

Except for high salaries, those aren’t the concerns Republicans are focusing on. Instead, they suppose that DEI efforts inescapably enhance divisions by focusing on injustices, that a “colorblind” outlook prevents prejudice, and that inclusion can be reduced to generic kindness.

Research does not support those views. Abuse based on a person’s identity persists today, sometimes because of biases abusers don’t realize they harbor. And the effects of generations of mistreatment will not vanish even when abuse stops.

House File 616 has advanced out of a committee but has not been debated on the House floor. Its potential consequences are real.

The bill says universities cannot “establish, sustain, support, or staff a diversity, equity, and inclusion office.” A directory for the University of Iowa’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion includes 37 names. Board of Regents officials said the bill could complicate how it provides scholarship aid for lower-income and middle-income students … an irony, since the bill directs the schools to redirect DEI spending to “merit scholarships for lower-income and middle-income students.” The high-profile settlement between UI and former Black football players specifies that the athletic department should continue its “current five-year Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategic plan.” Multiple Iowa chambers of commerce have registered their opposition to the bill.

The proposal "threatens the ability of someone like me to succeed at an institution like Iowa State," Mariana Gonzalez, an Iowa State University senior and first-generation college student, told USA TODAY.

Eliminating DEI is an idea that should not progress further. It’s one of numerous proposals this year where Republicans have relied on their large majorities in the Legislature to advance bills over the opposition of members of their own caucus. On this issue, the GOP should listen to their party colleagues, to the university presidents, and to Democrats, and stop micromanaging.

— Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register editorial board

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Don't blow up diversity efforts at public universities