(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
U.S. higher education under greater, indirect attack, national report says • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
['Brooklyn Draisey', 'Robin Opsahl', 'Shalina Chatlani', 'More From Author', '- July', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-07-29
Colleges across the U.S. are reaching a “freezing point” of free speech being restricted on campus as more states pass legislation aimed at controlling university curricula, shared governance and more, according to a report released by a national organization aimed at protecting free expression.
PEN America released a report mapping where laws have been introduced and passed limiting what can be discussed in classrooms and other restrictions on university practices. The report breaks the legislation down between “educational gag orders” and less direct actions that still impact the freedoms of universities, staff and students.
Amy Reid, an author of the report and senior program manager at PEN America, said the new laws are the result of “years of patient groundwork” that has turned censorship of classroom speech on college campuses into an actionable goal.
“Together, the cumulative effect of all of these things is beyond a chill,” Reid said. “We’ve gotten to a freezing point for speech on campuses where students and faculty and staff are all aware that they need to watch what they say, what they ask, how they interact on campuses — and that’s not good for education.”
According to the report, legislative bodies in 26 states have introduced more than 70 bills “to censor higher education” by June 30 of this year, 22 of which have been signed into law across 16 states. Six states, including Kansas, Ohio, West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky and Arkansas, enacted laws falling under this category for the first time this year. Twenty-one states in total have passed such legislation since 2021.
Some of these bills are referred to as “educational gag orders” in the report, which means they are direct efforts to specify what topics and ideas are and are not allowed to be taught in college classrooms. However, the majority of bills reported by PEN America in the report are categorized as having a more indirect path to restricting free expression.
PEN America singled out some legislation as examples of educational gag orders in the report, some from states identified as enacting laws that censor speech for the first time. Mississippi, West Virginia and Wyoming have all passed legislation that restrict discussion of certain topics, according to the report, such as race, color, sex, ethnicity and national origin, with a similar law from Arkansas adding “ideas or beliefs in violation of” the Civil Rights Act, Titles IV, VI, VII.
In Ohio, the report stated, the Legislature passed a law that bars public college faculty from voicing support or opposition for “controversial beliefs or policies” and requires them to “encourage students to reach their own conclusions” on these topics.
These laws can have an immediate impact on students and their education, Reid said.
“When (lawmakers) place curricular limits on what can be taught or what must be taught on college campuses, they’re rigging the game,” Reid said. “They’re saying that some ideas need to be advanced and others need to be squelched. That’s not freedom of expression, frankly, that’s very unAmerican.”
Iowa laws listed
Three bills signed into Iowa law this session were identified by the organization as targeting freedom in higher education in the report, including legislation to bar accrediting agencies from taking steps against universities for following state law; restricting state agencies and community colleges from having diversity, equity and inclusion offices or officers, and establishing a center for intellectual freedom at the University of Iowa.
The center’s director will be chosen by an advisory board of which only one member can be a university employee, will answer to the Iowa Board of Regents and will have sole authority over hiring of faculty, guest speaker invitations and more.
Iowa lawmakers who supported these bills, as well as past legislation that has barred Iowa universities from operating DEI offices and other practices, have said DEI programs have served to divide people, rather than bring them together, and their efforts will improve intellectual diversity and stop colleges from taking stances on topics they believe to be controversial.
Sen. Ken Rozenboom, R-Oskaloosa, said in a committee meeting during the legislative session the bill to restrict DEI offices in state entities “it addresses a problem that needs to be addressed.”
“It is not the proper place of a state entity to promote ideologies and opinions as their official role,” Rozenboom said.
Reid said she’s also worried about the legislation that takes a less direct approach to limiting freedoms, like those taking action against accrediting bodies and changing authority structures to take control away from the people doing the work and put it in the hands of people outside of the institution.
While federal actions taken against higher education, like changing and halting funding for research and collegiate programming, have captured people’s attention, Reid said the goal behind the PEN America report is to sound the alarm about what is happening potentially under the public’s nose.
It will take more than just halting the spread of new legislation, Reid said, to turn the tides against censorship, because laws currently in place will still be implementing policies that hurt free expression on college campuses. However, people standing up against ideas they believe will hurt higher education could help slow lawmakers who have felt emboldened to continuously bring forward legislation aimed at the country’s colleges.
“Bullies don’t stop until you stand up to them,” Reid said. “And so what PEN is doing by calling attention to this trend is making sure that we don’t lose sight of the damage that’s being done in state capitals across the country … just because we are needing to pay attention to the big federal moves that impact millions of dollars of research funds.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2025/07/29/u-s-higher-education-under-greater-indirect-attack-national-report-says/
Published and (C) by Iowa Capital Dispatch
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND-NC 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/iowacapitaldispatch/
