The Board of Regents made a decision in 2025 to require all faculty at Iowa State, the University of Northern Iowa, and the University of Iowa to “provide public access” to their syllabi. The exact wording of this ordinance is as follows: “All institutions governed by the Iowa Board of Regents will provide public access to undergraduate course syllabus information, thereby promoting transparency and informed decision-making among students and the public.” Starting this fall, faculty are required to comply. The general principle of being straightforward with students about what is being taught is not what I take issue with. That general principle is being used as a rhetorical frame for this new syllabus requirement, but the requirement itself is an act of government control, and it will create a chilling effect on any teaching that challenges the way our state or federal governments use or maintain power.

This ordinance is blatant pressure by our state government on our university. It puts deliberate pressure on our ability to teach students truth — truth about our country today and any painful aspects of our history. It is also a threat to teaching critical thinking in general. Why? As an instructor here who also got her undergraduate degree here in 2009 and an MFA here in 2022, I have some layered insight about this matter.

There are serious reasons why some educators like me may object to this new syllabus rule. For me, it has to do with the nature of education itself: how information and ideas can change and empower us (and how the government should not try to shape that process). My own education from this university has changed and empowered me. As part of the Iowa State community over the last twenty years, I’ve learned about some ugly realities of our country. Some important topics explored in classes and with fellow students have included genocide against Native Americans, slavery, the realities of the brutal violence that crushed Civil Rights activists, and the realities of the brutal violence of our prison system today. Books have been written about these topics, carefully researched books that are worthy of respect. Articles have been written. Films have been made. Many of these works that I read or watched were on syllabi. I read, I watched, I learned, and I became uncomfortable.

The specific facts that made me uncomfortable about the world I live in have, over time, become very important to me. I’ve learned that I want to be a part of making the world better somehow. But on a more fundamental level, when I was an undergraduate student taking English composition in the Maple Willow Larch computer lab over twenty years ago, I learned how to question authority in the first place. I learned about rhetorical fallacies for the first time, which gave me a healthy dose of skepticism in all contexts in which people tried to persuade me to think or do things. This helped me learn how to see lies, which has made it more possible to see the truth. In this way, I became stronger, and that strength has continued to grow inside me ever since.

Because truth makes you strong, it can be a very serious threat to anyone who wants power over you. For students, whatever your political persuasion or ethnicity, you are vulnerable to this dynamic. Even if you are white like me, it is a threat to your personal power to not be educated about the inequalities in this country. Truth, even when it makes you uncomfortable, makes you strong. Whatever internal light guides you will never be crushed by truth. However, if you can’t freely learn, you will never have the painful, beautiful opportunity to experience that fact.

This ordinance is not a small thing; it is not merely a formality. It is literal government pressure to stifle education that makes people read, learn, question authority and, ultimately, become strong. This is wrong. The more we capitulate to government pressure to make education comfortable for the privileged, the more we cut off all students’ legs from under them. This is a place where I learned to be strong. I do not want to take that same precious opportunity from my own students. This university should not take that opportunity from them.