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Regents support legal review after video airs of UI official's remarks about DEI • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
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Date: 2025-07-30
Iowa Board of Regents and University of Iowa officials said Wednesday they were investigating a Fox News video where a person identified as a UI official spoke about anti-DEI regulations.
Gov. Kim Reynolds filed a complaint to the state attorney general’s office early Wednesday against UI in response to the video. She said in a statement Tuesday night she was “appalled” by the remarks made by the UI employee, identified in the video as Andrea Tinoco, the assistant director of UI Leadership and Student Organization Development, who Reynolds said “blatantly admits to defying DEI restrictions I signed into law.”
The video features the person identified as Tinoco stating in February or March, communications staff informed their office that references to DEI had to be removed from their websites, but “we’re essentially finding ways to operate around it.”
“That was our solution,” she said. “We were like, ‘oh, OK, we can’t use that word. OK, ‘civic engagement.’ I think that’s a lot of what we’re doing.”
In the video, she said while references to DEI have been removed from university websites, she still personally uses the term DEI.
“We are still doing DEI work,” she said. “We’re still working with our students. I have yet to be told, like, ‘Drea, you can’t say DEI,’ and I’m still gonna say it. I don’t know if it’s just the play on the website of like, ‘oh, OK, yeah, we took off the words,’ but we’re still doing what we do here, but we’re still doing what we need to do, what we know we have to do for students.”
In the filing to the attorney general’s office, the governor said the video contains comments that indicate the University of Iowa effectively maintains a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office or has employees that perform duties of a DEI office, writing “there certainly appears to be, at a minimum, a potential violation of Iowa Code §261J.2.”
In 2024, Iowa lawmakers passed a ban on Iowa’s public universities establishing, maintaining or funding diversity, equity and inclusion offices under the bill, unless required by state or federal law or accreditors. The new law went into effect July 1. But before that law had even passed, the state Board of Regents, the governing body over Iowa’s three public universities, had already performed work to review and change the universities’ DEI offices at the governor’s directive.
At Wednesday’s Board of Regents meeting, Regents members as well as UI officials said they welcomed the attorney general’s review of the case. UI President Barbara Wilson assured the board the university is taking the video and allegations connected to it seriously. The UI has already launched an investigation into the matter, she said, and has reached out to board staff and the attorney general’s office for coordination.
“This review is being conducted in accordance with our established procedures to ensure fairness, accuracy and … impartiality,” Wilson said. “If at any point we find the policies or laws have been violated, we will take the necessary corrective actions without hesitation.”
Regent David Barker also commented on the video during the board meeting, saying the clip and other reports received by the board relating to ongoing DEI activities at state universities were “predictable and show that we as a board have more work to do.”
Barker said during the meeting he has made efforts in the past to acknowledge there will be ongoing violations of the law relating to DEI and oversee efforts by universities to come under compliance with board directives and state law, but has been denied by Bates and former board president Mike Richards.
When chairing the committee charged with reviewing DEI practices at state universities in 2023, Barker said he “did not have confidence that all of them would faithfully execute our directives,” which included closing DEI offices, reviewing and restructuring positions and programming and more.
“That clip on Fox News yesterday, I think, demonstrates that we have a continuing DEI problem,” Barker said.
The video, labeled as “undercover” in the Fox News description, did not state who was filming the UI staff member, or if she had consented to being filmed. Fox News did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the verification process for the video.
Iowa Board of Regents President Sherry Bates also said she supported the attorney general’s review, saying the situation filmed was “unacceptable.”
“Following the law is not optional, nor is working around the law,” Bates said. “Any attempt to skirt the law needs to be dealt with swiftly. The board fully supports the attorney general’s review and will take any action needed to correct this very problematic situation.”
Regent Christine Hensley told Wilson during the meeting that how the investigation is handled could “dictate a lot in the future for the University of Iowa,” and she hopes the university and board are as aggressive as they can be in dealing with the issue.
In a statement on the governor’s complaint, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, a Republican, issued a statement saying the office had opened an investigation into the matter.
“Regent universities must comply with our state laws including the Iowa Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) Act–Iowa Code Chapter 261J, Iowa Code Chapter 19, and also an Executive Order signed by President Trump on January 22, 2025,” Bird said.
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