Fear and scrubbing rule at UI

[cigaretteman]

Well, the University of Iowa’s webpages are getting a good scrubbing and a refreshing coat of whitewash.



This scrubbing is aimed at making sure the university’s websites say nothing about diversity, equity and inclusion. This stuff needs to be deleted under orders from the Board of Regents, which is taking its orders from angry Republican state lawmakers.


They control of everything, but they’re always angry.




According to an extensive story Sunday by The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, the scrubbing isn’t just tossing webpages, it’s erasing pieces of UI’s history. Do any of these records belong to the public? Is this censoring protected speech? Who knows?


Miller described some of the content being purged — diversity scholarships, a letter to the university by former President Bruce Herrald after the George Floyd verdicts and a letter from the Trans Inclusivity Coalition pledging to support trans students.


“I am directing the institutions to pull down any current or archived webpages regarding diversity, equity, and/or inclusion,” regents President Sherry Bates said after Republican lawmakers dressed down the universities for not moving quickly enough to dismantle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts.


Sure, it’s just some webpages. No big deal.






But similar scrubbing is happening at businesses, organizations and local governments, any entity that needs federal funding. Climate data once posted by NOAA and the USDA has been removed. It all stinks of authoritarianism.


The regents fear retribution from under the Statehouse, although most board members are willing reactors. Our great universities, our historic guardians of knowledge, bullwarks against ignorance, now tremble in fear Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis.


Lawmakers talk about returning to a “merit” based university system. The flip side is a persistent smear that students who benefited from diversity efforts lack merit. Black college grades who succeeded after college and started careers are “DEI hires.” You know, like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.


It’s racism. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.


Scaring the hell out of people has become fashionable. Journalism, is pulling punches and settling B.S. lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies. Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos barred his newspaper from endorsing Harris is ordering the opinion page to change its objectives.


Federal workers fear being abruptly fired by Elon Musk. Military officers and lawyers judged to be disloyal to Trump are being sacked. Republicans are too frightened to stop, or even question, the madman.


Our “golden age” is making this country dumber, meaner, darker and scary. We didn’t even get low price eggs.


“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, CEOs, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism,” said Steven Levitsky, co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” told the New York Times.


Our Republican heroes have a remarkably inflated notion of their power to erase ideas. Ideas are stubborn and stick around. The more you try to purge ideas, the more powerful they become. Ask any authoritarian on the scrap heap of history.


Oh, and one more thing, it’s the Gulf of Mexico.

Opinion: Fear and scrubbing rule at UI

The Pentacrest on the campus of the University of Iowa. (Stephen Mally/The Gazette) Well, the University of Iowa’s webpages are …

www.thegazette.com

 

[cigaretteman]

Last spring, University of Iowa Director of Equity Tiffini Stevenson Earl received the 2024 David J. Skorton Staff Excellence Award for “her dedication to our university.”



Months earlier, in fall 2023, UI student and diversity ambassador scholarship recipient Josie Mbaye shared a personal essay on how studying abroad helped her appreciate chronic illnesses she suffered for the coping and perseverance skills they instilled.


Years before that, in April 2021, then-UI President Bruce Harreld penned a letter to the university community following the guilty verdict of the Minneapolis officer involved in the George Floyd killing.




“How our community moves forward impacts our ongoing fight against racism and the growth of our campus culture,” according to the message, promising “institutional change will be created through listening, dialogue, and action over time.”


And a month earlier, in March 2021, the university’s then-Trans Inclusivity Coalition wrote an “open letter to transgender students” — distributed by the UI Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.


“Here, in this time, we make a pledge,” according to that letter, co-signed by the UI Division of DEI, Division of Student Life and University Counseling Service, among 28 other UI councils, centers and government bodies. “We pledge to speak up and to act up, trading our stability to ensure your safety.”


Those disparate reports now have one thing in common: They have been scrubbed from a UI website reflecting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — like most of 12 pages of articles the renamed and reframed UI Division of Access, Opportunity and Diversity maintained in its online archive until a recent Board of Regents directive.






The work of scouring online mentions of campus DEI efforts illustrates how pervasive of a task it is to remove those reports from all of the UI’s webpages. While those items have vanished from the former DEI webpage, some still live on — for now — in postings on other UI webpages for programs and colleges.


“I am directing the institutions to pull down any current or archived webpages regarding diversity, equity, and/or inclusion,” regents President Sherry Bates said in a statement last month following continued criticism from Republican state lawmakers upset with any evidence of DEI work across the public universities.


“Once the pages are down, then the universities — in consultation with the board office — can determine what pages need to exist but be rewritten,” Bates said.


In line with that directive, the UI Division of Access, Opportunity and Diversity site now contains just two pages of items deemed in compliance with both regent and legislative mandates. And even a remaining story with the headline “UI makes progress implementing Iowa Board of Regents DEI directives,” connects to a dead link.


The online DEI review applies not just to existing and shuttered departments that once had missions centered on diversity, but to web content managers across the campuses and their different colleges and departments.


On the Iowa State University site, for example, a years-old link to news of a faculty senate DEI committee now leads to an “access denied” screen. Another ISU link to a “faculty award for diversity enhancement” redirects to a more general “honors and awards” page. And a “diversity and inclusion” page specific to the ISU Department of Kinesiology now goes straight to that department’s homepage.


On the UI site, a link to the University Counseling Service’s “trans inclusive care” now leads to a “page not found.” A “name change fund” that once was called the “trans student support fund” now links to a broad “student life emergency fund.” And the UI College of Public Health’s DEI page now “can’t be found.”

Board of Regents adopts social media policy for universities

“The proposed revisions clarify expectations regarding university management and oversight of institutional social media accounts,” according to a summary of those policy revisions, which came back before the board for approval in February. “The universities are generally expected to refrain...

www.thegazette.com

 

[cigaretteman]

‘Delete it’​

Still, the work is vast — with many DEI-related reports and plans across the campuses still accessible through various college websites and internet searches.


At the University of Northern Iowa, for example, most dated DEI-related links remained live for now — including news of a “Celebrating Diversity” event in November showcasing “the importance of cultural diversity and global understanding”; a long list of archived stories from its now-defunct Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice; and information on a DEI certificate that UNI students still can earn by studying a range of topics from gender to religion to politics.


Courses that count toward the certificate — which remains available to interested students — include “masculine cultures,” “introduction to LGTBQ studies” and “women’s and gender studies.”


“We had one student enroll in the certificate program in 2023 and four in 2024,” UNI spokesman Pete Moris said.


At the UI, DEI digest reports from years back remain accessible — as do DEI news items across various colleges.


It was the ongoing DEI references across the campus websites, in part, that sparked ire in February from Republican Rep. Brooke Boden of Indianola when Iowa’s public university presidents met with a legislative appropriations committee.


“If interiorly we’re doing the work, it sure doesn’t seem like it on the internet, which is where a lot of people reside,” Boden said, highlighting the Legislature’s role in funding the public campuses. “We're looking at funding the schools and, to me, funding comes with following the law. So when and how do we handle these non-compliances?”


That question compelled regents President Bates to promise impressing on the institutions the need to comb through their websites to remove or rewrite any current or archived pages “regarding DEI.”


“If you know a page should be removed in its entirety, delete it,” the UI Office of Strategic Communication told faculty and staff in guidance that the Board of Regents Office then passed on to both Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa to follow.

‘Erasing history’​

The web review, according to that guidance, should cover pages, menu items, Word documents, Excel files and past or archived events, stories, statements and climate surveys — among others.


It doesn’t cover faculty or student research, a faculty member’s curriculum vitae, academic journals, course names and descriptions and library publications.


“If you know a page has problematic content but you can edit it quickly and easily, make the edits and keep it published,” according to the guidance. “If the editing process is going to take time, unpublish the pages until you can bring them into compliance and republish once you’ve finished your edits.”


For pages that web managers are unsure about, UI Strategic Communication advised unpublishing the content before discussing it with a supervisor. The same went for “pages that appear in violation of the directive, but you would like to make the case for why they should remain.”


In a frequently-asked-questions summary about the DEI web review, the UI communications team suggested campus news items about DEI-related research and scholarship should be removed for review. The same goes for student profiles “where the student speaks about DEI on campus in their own words.”


“These are university produced and not considered academic content so should either be edited or removed for review,” according to the FAQ.


To one person’s question asking, “Can we download it and save it offline? It seems like we are erasing history,” UI communications responded, “For now, we are unpublishing content for review.”


And when asked if the web pages are considered public record, the university responded that it is “not legally required to maintain this content online.”


“If we receive a FOIA request, we will follow the public records law.”


Given the lawmaker pressure and regents directives are tied to a law passed last session barring spending and work on diversity, equity and inclusion — defined in sweeping terms as anything promulgating or promoting differential treatment, training, policies or procedures — the UI guidance said legal enforcement beings July 1.


“But we should work diligently to complete our work by May 1.”


The UI guidance referenced a “review committee” for this process, but officials said, “We don’t have any additional information at this time.”


To The Gazette’s questions for ISU and UNI about what processes they’re following in reviewing their webpages and redacting DEI-related information, ISU spokeswoman Angie Hunt said, “Iowa State has updated or removed websites as changes have been made in compliance with DEI directives and laws.


“The university will continue to review and make additional changes to comply with the directive from President Bates.”


Moris, the UNI spokesman, on Friday told The Gazette, “We are still evaluating the specifics of this directive at UNI so we don’t have anything further to share at this time.”

 

[Phenomenally Frantastic]

Long overdue and good for society in the long run.

These programs are senselessly divisive and explicitly racist. Governments should not be funding racist programs.

Democrats are blatantly campaigning for racist policies, seems nothing has changed since the Jim Crow era for them.

 

[THE_DEVIL]

Long overdue and good for society in the long run.

These programs are senselessly divisive and explicitly racist. Governments should not be funding racist programs.

Democrats are blatantly campaigning for racist policies, seems nothing has changed since the Jim Crow era for them.

I've seen you post this a couple of times so I need to let you know you are misguided in your belief that Dems are the racist party.

The Great Switch

 

[Phenomenally Frantastic]

I've seen you post this a couple of times so I need to let you know you are misguided in your belief that Dems are the racist party.

The Great Switch

Continuing and advocating for the policies of Jim Crow is no switch. Selecting people based on a preferred race is no different than the 1910s segregation era.

DEI policies are explicitly discriminatory, on purpose. Intentional.

Democrats are fighting to bring their policies back and entrench them again.

Only the target of the oppressive policies have changed.

 

[LunchBox50]

Continuing and advocating for the policies of Jim Crow is no switch. Selecting people based on a preferred race is no different than the 1910s segregation era.

DEI policies are explicitly discriminatory, on purpose. Intentional.

Democrats are fighting to bring their policies back and entrench them again.

Only the target of the oppressive policies have changed.

Is that what Elon told you during your phone call last night?

 

[Phenomenally Frantastic]

Is that what Elon told you during your phone call last night?

Yes how did you know?

 

[LunchBox50]

Yes how did you know?

How often do you guys talk? Do you address him as "Sir," the way everyone does in Trump's stories, or are you guys on a first-name basis? Do you have nicknames for each other? What's his safe word?

 

[cohawk]

Long overdue and good for society in the long run.

These programs are senselessly divisive and explicitly racist. Governments should not be funding racist programs.

Democrats are blatantly campaigning for racist policies, seems nothing has changed since the Jim Crow era for them.

As opposed to Republicans who are racist. gotcha