Iowa

Proving Discrimination Is Almost Impossible

Teresa Wagner’s lawsuit against the University of Iowa law school ended a few weeks ago when a jury declared that the school did not submit her to political discrimination when it rejected her application for a job. Wagner made a second allegation–that her equal protection rights were violated because the law school held her political […]

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Preferred and Prohibited Discrimination

Is the Fourteenth Amendment inferior to the First? If states are generally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of political identity, why should they be allowed to discriminate on the basis of racial identity? Consider Teresa Wagner’s much-discussed lawsuit against the University of Iowa College of Law for not hiring her due to her political […]

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Iowa and the Groupthink Academy

That certain quarters of the academy–humanities departments, most social sciences departments, and many graduate programs (social work, education, and to a lesser extent law)–are ideologically imbalanced is not news. A decision in an Iowa court, however, exposed the difficulty in addressing the problem. The case, which received extensive coverage in the Des Moines Register and […]

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What’s Wrong with Accreditation–A Textbook Case

The world of higher education is abuzz with the news that a for-profit university, Ashford University, whose Iowa campus holds accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, has been denied accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) for its online headquarters. Denial of accreditation for schools that already have […]

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Conservatives Should Drop the Apology Demand

Some readers of Minding the Campus may have noticed the little fracas at University of Iowa between College Republicans and anthropology/women’s studies professor Ellen Lewin.  You can read about it in any of the many stories listed on this Google news page. The details are simple.  UI College Republicans sent out a mass email, approved […]

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The Skewing of American History

A few years ago, the University of Iowa’s History Department conducted a search for a new hire in U.S. foreign relations. After the department denied a preliminary, or screening, interview to Mark Moyar—a highly qualified (B.A. summa cum laude in history from Harvard, Ph.D. In history from Cambridge), but also clearly conservative, historian—it came to […]

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