Iowa Board of Regents selects new Center for Intellectual Freedom director

The Iowa Board of Regents has selected Carson Holloway as the new director of the Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa, opening a new chapter for the center amid conflict over its development.

Board of Regents President Robert Cramer said he appreciated the “time and energy” center interim director Luciano de Castro put into the center in its first year of operation, but disagreed with the narrative de Castro presented in his annual report to the General Assembly.

“We have a very different view of what has happened in the last year, and a different view of how we should move forward,” Cramer said. “So our new director is ready to make that shift, and will very soon have a very different story to tell.”

Holloway currently serves as chair of the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s department of political science and interim chair of the philosophy department, according to his curriculum vitae. He also launched a constitutional studies forum at the university in 2022.

In the report, de Castro lists instances of what he called potential illegal actions taken by board of regents staff and University of Iowa officials that limited the center’s development and progress in setting up courses and other programming.

Whoever would succeed de Castro in the director position would be “operating under close control by a Board that has consistently followed the University administration’s preferences,” he said in the report. Operating in this way, de Castro wrote, would lead the center’s future required course offerings to becoming a “staged pretense of reform, rather than the real change that could have been truly valuable to the students of the University of Iowa.”

Cramer, who has described himself as a conservative during past board of regents meetings, said Tuesday that de Castro “should have understood that the board takes an active role in the institutions it governs.” He noted de Castro was an open supporter of the legislation that places the center director as reporting to the regents board.

The board also has a responsibility to Iowa taxpayers, whose money has gone through state appropriations to the center through the UI, Cramer said. The center tried working within the UI policies before they realized that “we need to have some separation,” he said.

“Then the board office, under the direction of the board, attempted to assist the center in its creation and use of those tax dollars,” Cramer said. “However, it became readily clear that there was a small subset of the advisory council on the center, and the interim director, that appeared that they did not want any oversight of the center and its use of taxpayer dollars by following the university policies or board advice and counsel.”

At that point, Cramer said the board office worked with the UI “to make the center an independent unit,” with a board committee created to oversee it and placing the university in a vendor role so the center can access its services. Hiring a permanent director was the next step in ensuring the center’s success, Cramer said the board felt, leading to resignations on the advisory council.

In his report, de Castro said he was told by UI Provost Kevin Kregel that the center “cannot function as an academic unit within the University of Iowa.”

Regent Christine Hensley, chair of the board’s Center for Intellectual Freedom committee, said she had many learning opportunities during the “long, drawn-out” director search process, including learning that the center’s model is unique in the U.S. and that other civics centers want to see this one succeed.

As there was no “playbook to go by” in creating this center, Hensley acknowledged they operated on a trial-and-error basis.

“I would be the first to admit that we probably made some mistakes along the way,” Hensley said. “But I’m feeling confident that in the next 18 months, we’ve got just a great opportunity to move forward, and the center is going to be in a really good place.”

De Castro will end his tenure with the center this week, but Iowa Board of Regents Senior Communications Director Josh Lehman said in an email Holloway’s start date, as well as his compensation package, have not been negotiated yet. De Castro said in the report he doesn’t wish to continue in the director role beyond his interim duties under the current conditions, despite having applied for the job, as he doesn’t believe the director’s duties can currently be completed as the General Assembly wanted.

Two of his recommendations in the report would have the board suspend its search for a permanent director and hire a new interim director in the meantime.