Regents ignore pleas for changes to new policy preventing ‘indoctrination’

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On the eve of a Board of Regents vote to change its academic freedom and class content policies to satisfy legislative concerns about “indoctrination,” the national Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — or FIRE — reached out with a plea.

“The proposal’s problematic language will make faculty think twice before teaching established concepts to their students, imperiling academic freedom in the process,” FIRE program counsel Ross Marchand wrote to the board in an Aug. 11 letter obtained by The Gazette. “FIRE calls on the Iowa Board of Regents to revise this proposed language to affirm that professors have wide latitude to teach their subject without fear of administrative sanction.”