August 17th, 2025
To University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson,
I am withdrawing my acceptance to the University of Iowa’s Master of Social Work Program for this upcoming fall semester.
Like others, I have become disturbed by our political leaders’ attack on higher education and using Race and Gender as pawns. Equally disturbing is the way the University of Iowa administration has not only remained silent on this subject, but has, in fact, begun enforcing its DEI bans with threats and punishments.
How did we get here as a country, erasing centuries of history that made us? To make history illegal? To label it “controversial” to teach or discuss how race and gender are significant components of our society is detrimental to everyone and the epitome of ignorance. To not recognize the danger in allowing all white people to pass anti-DEI laws condones the myth that we are all equal to the white man’s experiences and is derelict.
Equally disturbing is Kim Reynold’s white appointed Board of Regents given charge of academia in our public universities. Also worrisome is how the University of Iowa did not step up to protect its employees who were speaking in personal conversations while unknowingly filmed. In fact, you were quick to support their paid leave and current investigations. I will not spend my money to support such a dangerous attempt at censorship and authoritarianism.
What makes this country work is the striving to right wrongs and promote progress toward equality for all, and that cannot take place without background, without history, without the truth, and without academic freedom. Erasing our country’s history because it makes white people “uncomfortable” destroys us and reverses any progress we have made. Making professors label academic thought, such as Critical Race Theory, as controversial and warn their students of its potential controversy is not how college works. College works by allowing students to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions.
The Iowa GOP lawmakers’ creation of The University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom is based on the AEI right-wing think tank that believes, “Administrators should make clear that slurs against conservatives, Republicans, religious believers, white men, and other categories of people unpopular on campus will be no more tolerated than slurs against other groups. They should make sure deans, department chairs, and HR staff are willing and able to discipline those who violate this policy. To be clear, all ideas are open to debate. But offensive generalizations about anyone poison the environment necessary for a vibrant argumentative culture to flourish.”
The entire premise of this center and the new academic policies is that leaders are afraid of students’ indoctrination into liberalism. The GOP wants desperately to oversee education, of subjects taught, of free thinking, and which history is the correct history. They believe it is their right. When I recently heard Regent Crame say, “I don’t want any of that DEI, CRT and woke left stuff, you know, being taught in our classes,” I made my decision.
I see the disheartening and despicable acts that our leaders are perpetuating to make “America Great Again.” Exactly when was this? When white men owned their wives? When white men owned and tortured Black people and children? Or when they lynched Black men? Or was it when women had no right to property, or banking, or to their own bodies and futures? Or was it when they interned Japanese American citizens? How about when masked men are abducting immigrants from our streets? I can’t believe how Iowa’s leaders of education don’t see their part in his. Or won’t.
If you believe I am overacting, then I have communicated my position well. If you think I am a radical because of my fear of the White Nationalism implied in your policies, you are wrong. I am no “radical”. I am a white woman, a mother and grandmother, who has learned after living with myself for decades, that there is nothing radical about the truth.t
Someone asked me if the GOP agenda and polices affect me personally. Of course they do. But when I realized that my plans for my future were in jeopardy because of these policies, I had a minuscule glimpse into what our people dragged from their families or thrown off Medicaid must be living with. The difference is that I have a choice in how I respond to this dangerous takeover. They don’t.
I officially withdraw my acceptance from the University of Iowa Master of Social Work graduate program at Des Moines, IA.
Jennifer Norum, Des Moines, IA
In a Word 