Who Gets to Control the University Curriculum? What's Shaping Up at the University of Iowa and Ohio University, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Who Gets to Control the University Curriculum? What's Shaping Up at the University of Iowa and Ohio University

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 15, 2026

University of Iowa—Main Campus

There is a development at the University of Iowa that deserves far more national attention.

The issue is not simply that the university now has a Center for Intellectual Freedom. Universities create centers all the time, including centers devoted to particular schools of thought, political traditions, and areas of intellectual inquiry.

What makes this one different is where its authority comes from and where that authority resides.

The Iowa legislature created the Center for Intellectual Freedom by law as an independent academic center under the Iowa Board of Regents. Its director reports directly to the Board of Regents rather than through the university's ordinary channels of academic leadership and governance. The director also has exclusive authority over hiring and termination within the center (Iowa General Assembly, 2025; University of Iowa, 2026).

And the state's involvement does not stop there.

Beginning with students entering in academic years on or after July 1, 2028, Iowa law requires University of Iowa undergraduates, with specified exceptions, to complete at least six credit hours in designated coursework. At the University of Iowa, the Center for Intellectual Freedom is designated as the sole academic unit responsible for offering courses that satisfy that requirement (Iowa General Assembly, 2026). 

That is not merely another educational experiment.

It represents a significant relocation of curricular power.

Universities have always been places of intellectual disagreement. Indeed, that is part of their purpose. Faculty argue over theories, methods, canons, requirements, evidence, and what constitutes an educated person. Departments disagree. Disciplines change. Students encounter ideas that excite them, unsettle them, and sometimes anger them.

But historically, those arguments have occurred primarily within the academic institution—through faculty deliberation, curriculum committees, departments, colleges, disciplinary standards, and systems of shared governance.

Iowa is moving that boundary.

The state is not simply asking universities to expose students to a wider range of ideas. It has created an academic entity through legislation, placed it under unusual governance arrangements, and guaranteed that entity a privileged position in the undergraduate curriculum.

That distinction matters.

One can strongly support intellectual pluralism—and I certainly do—while still questioning whether legislatures should determine which academic units every undergraduate must encounter in order to receive a degree.

In fact, these positions are entirely compatible.

Genuine intellectual freedom requires argument, experimentation, disagreement, dissent, and intellectual risk. It also requires institutions with sufficient independence to prevent political authorities from determining which intellectual traditions deserve institutional preference.

And Iowa is not alone.

Look at What Is Happening in Ohio.

The mechanism in Ohio is different, but the underlying shift in authority is strikingly similar.

Ohio's 2025 higher education legislation requires public universities to incorporate a state-defined conception of “intellectual diversity” into areas that reach deeply into academic decision-making. At Ohio University, institutional policy implementing the law now applies intellectual-diversity considerations to course approval, approval of general-education courses, student course evaluations, common-reading programs, departmental strategic goals, annual reviews, and student learning outcomes (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217, 2025; Ohio University, 2026).

Consider the significance of that.

The state is no longer simply funding higher education, establishing broad degree requirements, or holding public institutions fiscally accountable. It has introduced a politically defined concept into the processes by which universities determine what courses should exist, what belongs in general education, how departments establish goals, and even how teaching and learning are evaluated.

Ohio law defines “intellectual diversity” in relation to differing perspectives on public-policy questions and separately identifies politically controversial matters such as climate policy, elections, foreign policy, DEI, immigration, marriage, and abortion (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217, 2025).

Ohio has gone further still.

State law requires public universities to develop a three-credit American civic literacy course for students seeking bachelor's degrees. The legislature specifies substantial elements of what students must study, including the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, writings of Adam Smith, and the American economic system and capitalism. Students must also pass a cumulative examination assessing proficiency in the prescribed materials. Institutional trustees must approve the course plan, and the state chancellor reviews the plan and may require revisions (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.382, 2025; Ohio University, 2025).

Again, my concern is not with teaching these texts.

Students should read the Constitution. They should read the Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence. They should read Adam Smith and Martin Luther King Jr. They should encounter competing interpretations of democracy, capitalism, equality, freedom, citizenship, and government.

The problem is not the presence of these ideas.

It is the changing answer to the question: Who decides?

At Iowa, the state has effectively constructed a new curricular lane and directed students into it.

In Ohio, the state has moved into the rules governing the curricular road itself.

Different mechanisms. Similar direction of travel.

Both developments blur an important boundary between legitimate public oversight of public universities and direct political involvement in academic judgment.

That boundary exists for a reason.

The longstanding principles of shared governance hold that faculty bear primary responsibility for curriculum, subject matter, methods of instruction, and degree requirements precisely because these are areas requiring academic expertise and disciplinary judgment. The AAUP has argued for decades that governing boards possess important institutional responsibilities but should overturn faculty academic judgment only under exceptional circumstances (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 1966). More recently, the AAUP has warned that the erosion of institutional autonomy and shared governance can enable governments and governing boards to exercise increasing control over academic decisions (AAUP, 2026).

This does not mean universities should be unaccountable.

Public universities are public institutions. Legislatures appropriate money. Governing boards have fiduciary responsibilities. The public has every right to demand educational quality, fiscal stewardship, transparency, and accessibility.

But public accountability and political control of knowledge are not the same thing.

And that distinction is becoming increasingly important.

The vocabulary surrounding these interventions can make the shift difficult to see.

“Intellectual freedom.”

“Viewpoint diversity.”

“Civic education.”

“Accountability.”

“Excellence.”

Each refers to something that can be genuinely valuable.

But words can also change political function.

We witness in this moment, for example, the appropriation of broadly appealing democratic language in ways that can obscure a transfer of power occurring underneath it.

Freedom begins to mean something different when the state determines where students must go to receive it.

Diversity means something different when government defines the categories through which intellectual diversity is to be measured.

And institutional autonomy begins to mean very little when outside political bodies increasingly determine which forms of knowledge receive special standing, which criteria govern course approval, and which content students must encounter.

This is not an argument against conservative scholarship, constitutional studies, Western thought, civic education, or any particular intellectual tradition.

Quite the opposite.

A university worthy of the name should be capable of accommodating—and encouraging—serious disagreements among liberal, conservative, radical, religious, secular, nationalist, internationalist, and other intellectual traditions.

But pluralism created through intellectual inquiry is different from pluralism engineered through political authority.

That difference is at the heart of what is unfolding.

And the story extends well beyond Iowa and Ohio.

For readers seeking a deeper understanding of how seemingly separate state-level interventions fit into a broader political strategy, I highly recommend Isaac Kamola’s (2024) Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023. Published by the AAUP, this important report traces the political infrastructure behind the wave of legislation targeting higher education and shows how think tanks, advocacy organizations, model legislation, and state lawmakers have worked across state lines to transform debates over DEI, academic freedom, tenure, governance, and curriculum into a coordinated legislative agenda. 

What can appear, when viewed state by state, as a series of isolated controversies looks quite different when the larger architecture is brought into view. Kamola’s analysis helps us see that Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Florida, and other states should not necessarily be understood as disconnected cases, but as sites where related ideas, legislative strategies, and political networks are being translated into policy (Kamola, 2024).

In Texas, Florida, and other states, political authorities have been altering governance structures, restricting or restructuring academic programs, regulating DEI, modifying tenure and faculty oversight, imposing curricular requirements, and redistributing authority among faculty, administrators, governing boards, and legislatures.

The particulars differ.

The larger question does not.

The struggle over American higher education is increasingly becoming a struggle over the machinery of knowledge itself: who controls academic institutions, who determines what counts as legitimate knowledge, which fields receive resources and protection, what students must learn, and who gets the final word when academics and political authorities disagree.

That is why Iowa and Ohio deserve our attention. Texas universities and other states, obviously, too—and about which I have blogged substantially.

The most important debate may ultimately not be whether our universities contain enough liberal ideas or conservative ideas.

It may be about something more fundamental:

Who gets to decide what a university is for—and who gets to control what happens inside its classrooms?

References

American Association of University Professors. (1966). Statement on government of colleges and universities. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

American Association of University Professors. (2026, July). Extorted compliance: A threat to institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and shared governance. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/extorted-compliance-threat-institutional

Iowa General Assembly. (2025). House File 437: Center for Intellectual Freedom Act. https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/LGE/91/HF437.pdf

Kamola, I. (2024). Manufacturing backlash: Right-wing think tanks and legislative attacks on higher education, 2021–2023. American Association of University Professors. https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Manufacturing_Backlash_final_0.pdf

Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217 (2025). https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3345.0217

Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.382 (2025). https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3345.382

Ohio University. (2025). Report—American Civic Literacy Course Work Group.
https://www.ohio.edu/provost/projects-initiatives/advance-ohio-higher-education-work-groups/american-civics-literacy-0

Ohio University. (2026). Advance Ohio Higher Education Act compliance (Policy 18.010). https://www.ohio.edu/policy/18-010

University of Iowa. (2026, June 22). Director, Center for Intellectual Freedom (Requisition No. 75977) [Job posting]. https://jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view/75977