Hunter
04/24/25
Angry students and community members descended on the Iowa Board of Regents meeting in Ames Wednesday to protest their anti-DEI actions and the restrictions placed upon them due to state legislation.
The Gazette reports the half dozen people who spoke during a public comment portion of the meeting hammered regents for bending to demands from Republican lawmakers and a governor who they said seems uninterested in academic freedom, free speech, and the core values that have long been the pillars of higher education.
The Regents gave the state-run universities a list of directives in 2023 that became state law in 2024, including banning DEI offices, hiring, staffing, training, and related spending. Even though the universities complied, lawmakers pushed for any references to DEI stripped from university websites.
Protesters urged the Regents to push back on federal cuts to higher education funding, research and course content. University of Iowa student Darrell Washington called the Regents’ directives removing DEI references an attempt to “scrub our histories, our identities, our truths, out of the curriculum, out of existence.”
He said of the university community, which includes a strong international student population, “We are not invisible. We are not optional. We are not leaving. We are here. We belong. We matter. And we will be heard.”