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New University of Iowa intellectual freedom center airs plans for first meeting, inaugural event, spring courses
Director De Castro is already finalizing some of the courses
Nov. 12, 2025 11:40 am, Updated: Nov. 12, 2025 1:10 pm
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IOWA CITY — The first meeting of a new Legislature-imposed University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom advisory council has been set for next week, on Tuesday, over Zoom — meaning the half who live outside Iowa won’t need to travel to the state.
The inaugural meeting of the 26-member council will be open to the public — with the Board of Regents planning to notice it with an agenda at least 24 hours in advance.
Regent Christine Hensley — one of three regents appointed to the council — shared plans for that first meeting during a board meeting Wednesday at which regents considered new bylaws for the center.
She also flagged an upcoming inaugural “event“ for the center on Dec. 5 in answering a question from fellow regent Nancy Dunkel about spending and whether a center budget has been developed.
“There have been a couple of budgets put together — one for the overall operations of the center for the rest of this year, as you know we have a million dollars appropriation from the state,” Hensley said. “There is also a second budget that's been put together for the inaugural event.”
Hensley and the board didn’t immediately share additional details of that event or those budgets. She also didn’t disclose more about two courses she said are planned out of the center for the spring semester.
“Professor (Luciano I.) De Castro is already finalizing some of the courses — two courses he's talking about that will be one-hour courses that will be in the spring semester,” Hensley said. “There will be outside speakers that will be engaged. I know that they're working hard on engaging some outside speakers.”
De Castro led development of the new center bylaws after being appointed interim director of the center earlier this year.
Iowa-based control
Regents on Wednesday flagged a change they plan to make to the proposed bylaws to return power to state-based representatives — rather than the 13 academics pulled in from across the country.
As proposed, the center’s new bylaws require the advisory council to have a chair and both a “scholar committee” and “executive committee” of at least five members each.
A majority of the executive committee, per the bylaws, must be current or former tenured professors from research 1 institutions. The scholar committee must all be current or former tenured professors.
Those mandates give majority control to out-of-state council members — given all that fit the academic requirement of being current or emeritus professors are from outside Iowa.
“I’m hoping that we can maintain Iowa control,” regent Nancy Dunkel said, gaining support from fellow regent and council member Robert Cramer.
“I have the same concern,” Cramer said about the proposed section requiring a majority of the executive committee be tenured professors. “So I would propose we just strike that line.”
“I agree with Robert and Nancy, and I've heard from others with concerns that it's not an Iowa based executive committee,” board President Sherry Bates said. “And I think that that's really important to have.”
The board plans to propose an amendment striking that line when considering the bylaws before the full board Thursday.
‘What is the win?’
Per House File 437 that last session established the new UI center, the board is required to update lawmakers annually — with Hensley advising on plans to present to the Legislature the third week in January “on the progress that we’ve made.”
“To be perfectly honest, we are way beyond what was outlined in the legislation,” she said. “We've got the board appointed, we have the bylaws done, we’re talking about events, and we've hired a firm to do the market study for us.”
Hensley didn’t disclose more details about the market study — including what firm it has hired, how much it will cost, and what specifically it will research.
“The one other key item that we'll need to move forward with — that the executive committee will take the lead on — is doing a national search for the director,” Hensley said.
To a question from fellow regents about what success will look like, regent Cramer said it will center around increasing diversity of thought on campus.
“What is the win?” he asked. “I think the goal is to raise the level of civic knowledge and engagement by our students, to bring in speakers and offer these classes, but then also with the long-term intent of adding more debate to our campus where people of different sides can view different opinions, and we can let the students grapple with those things.
“Thirdly, I think a great benefit will be to attract more people of diverse political thought, or different ideas to come to our university.”
How to measure that still needs to be ironed out, Cramer said.
University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom advisory council members
In-state members:
- Chris Hensley, a Republican regent from Des Moines who served on the Des Moines City Council from 1994 to 2017. She also has served as president of the Iowa Student Loan Corporation, Iowa League of Cities and the Metro Advisory Council and chairs the Horizon Science Academy charter school governing board. Hensley has given thousands in political donations to Republicans like Sen. Joni Ernst, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Gov. Reynolds, and former Gov. Brandstad.
- Robert Cramer, a Republican regent and vice president of Cramer and Associates, Inc. — a family-owned bridge construction company. He also has served on the Johnston Community School Board and on the board of The Family Leader, a conservative faith-based advocacy organization. He has given tens of thousands to Republican candidates over the years — including more than $45,000 to Reynolds.
- Kurt Tjaden, a regent who lists his political party as “independent” in the state’s board database and in 2022 retired from HNI Corporation. Although he’s made fewer political donations, Tjaden gave $1,500 to Republican House Speaker Pat Grassley in 2021, along with $1,000 to the Muscatine County Republican Central Committee that year, according to state records.
- Reynolds Cramer, CEO of Fareway Stores, Inc., board member of the Iowa Business Council, and vice chair for the Food Marketing Institute in Washington, D.C. He’s given thousands to Republicans including to Sen. Kara Warme, R-Ames, and former Republican Auditor Mary Mosiman.
- Mike Whalen, founder and CEO of Heart of America Group — which owns and operates restaurants, hotels, and other commercial developments like the Machine Shed Restaurant and Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse. He’s given thousands in campaign contributions to Republicans like Attorney General Brenna Bird and Reynolds.
- Liz Mathis, economic development coordinator at the Hiawatha Economic Development Corporation, and a former Democratic state senator from Linn County. She was a news anchor, reporter and producer for KCRG-TV9 before running for office.
- Pete Matthes, the only UI employee on the council — serving as senior adviser to the president and vice president for external relations for more than a decade. He has not made significant political contributions, according to state records.
- Former Gov. Terry Branstad, who served as Iowa’s 39th and 42nd governor until President Donald Trump in 2017 appointed him to serve as U.S. ambassador to China. His total gubernatorial tenure spanned more than 22 years. Branstad in January met with lawmakers to testify in favor of the new UI Center for Intellectual Freedom.
- Greg Ganske, a Republican former state representative from 1995 to 2003 who serves on the UI Alumni Advisory Board. He’s given thousands to Republicans over the years, including Reynolds.
- Steve Lacy, who served as CEO of the Meredith Corporation media company from 2009 to 2019. He too has given thousands to Republicans over the years — including $10,000 to Reynolds in 2021 and 2022 and more than $1,000 to Attorney General Bird.
- Jim Lindenmayer, a former regent who listed “no party affiliation” during his time on the board from 2018 to April of this year. He served as president of Indian Hills Community College from 2001 to 2013 and made political contributions to both Republicans and Democrats over the years — including to Branstad; Rep. Kurt Swaim, D-Bloomfield; Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, R-Mount Ayr; and former U.S. Rep. Newt Gingrich in his 2012 presidential bid.
- Mike Richards, former Board of Regents President who served as a regent from 2017 to 2024. In his professional life, Richards was a doctor and businessman. He also was a major Republican political donor touted as a “kingmaker” more than a decade ago for giving hundreds of thousands to local politicians like Branstad and Reynolds, as well as national figures like presidential candidate Chris Christie.
- John Hendrickson, policy director for the Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation. He previously served as a research analyst with the Public Interest Institute and was a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, D.C. think-tank. He’s written opinion pieces for newspapers across the state, including The Gazette.
Out-of-state members
- Carlos Carvalho, president of the new private University of Austin, created in hopes of “fostering an environment of intellectual freedom and pluralism.” Carvalho, who founded the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas, was a strong supporter of the University of Austin project — conceived back in 2021 by a handful of high-profile conservatives like author Niall Ferguson, billionaire investor Joe Lonsdale, Free Press founder Bari Weiss, and Pano Kanelos — who was the university’s first president and upon Carvalho’s hire was appointed to chancellor, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
- Richard Lowery, a University of Texas finance professor who in 2023 sued his own campus on allegations it funding and supporting “left-wing” causes like affirmative action, critical-race theory indoctrination, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other things.
- Mark Bauerlein, an English professor emeritus at Emory University, who in 2023 was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on the board of trustees for the New College of Florida during a controversial shake-up. As a contributing editor of First Things — a magazine published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life aimed at advancing a “religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society” — Bauerlein has written of his opposition to DEI.
- Joshua Katz, a former Princeton University professor and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. While at Princeton, he faced criticism for his controversial take on the Black Justice League and was terminated from the university for alleged dishonestly in a misconduct probe, according to the Wall Street Journal. His allies, according to the Journal, slammed that decision as pretext to silence his unpopular views.
- Sergiu Klainerman is a mathematician at Princeton who has made modest campaign contributions to Republicans like Sen. Mitch McConnell, according to public records.
- Iván Marinovic joined Stanford Graduate School of Business as an assistant professor of accounting in July 2011. He and another council appointee — Dorian Abbot — faced backlash over an editorial they cowrote in Newsweek in 2021 arguing for more attention on academic excellence and individual achievement in university admissions and criticizing some aspects of DEI.
- Nicola Giuseppe Persico is a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern University. He’s written that “diversity at the top won’t automatically lead to more diverse leaders throughout the organization.”
- Joshua D. Rauh is a finance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
- Harald Uhlig is a German microeconomist and professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Uhlig in 2020 criticized the Black Lives Matter movement on Twitter and later faced allegations of discrimination in the classroom. He was put on leave temporarily but reinstated after investigators found no basis for a disciplinary proceeding.
- Dorian Abbot is a University of Chicago professor who faced criticism for his editorial in Newsweek in 2021.
- Daniel Albert Bonevac is a philosophy professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2016, Bonevac joined 145 other scholars and writers in declaring their support for Donald Trump for president. Last year, Bonevac joined another professor in filing a lawsuit in federal court demanding the right to fail students if they miss class for abortion care, among other things.
- Thomas Gallanis is a George Mason University professor, having previously taught at the University of Iowa. Earlier this year, he was accused of having too few women on a law panel.
- Wilfred M. McClay is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
Source: Iowa Board of Regents
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
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