Straws in the Wind - Part 287

From Inside Higher Ed: The Republican-controlled Iowa House passed three bills last week that would order curricular and other changes at the state’s three public universities: the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Whether they will also pass the state Senate, which is also in GOP hands, remains unclear.

House File 2487 would require the universities to identify any general ed course requirements that “include diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory–related content” by the fall 2028 semester. The legislation says the Board of Regents “in its discretion shall direct an institution to eliminate such a course or course requirement.” The bill doesn’t define DEI or CRT. For new undergraduates enrolling at the universities after July 1, 2028, a second bill, House File 2361, would generally require they complete a “comprehensive survey of all American history” course, and another on “all” American government to earn a four-year degree. The universities would have to accept these courses as fulfilling their “general education or core curriculum requirement for social sciences or humanities.”

The civics centers at these public universities—faculty critics often dub them conservative centers—would designate courses that meet the mandates, according to the legislation, which also requires the Board of Regents to review all undergrad gen ed requirements and core curricula at those institutions.

The third recently approved bill, House File 2245, would require the board to use search committees comprised of five voting board members when undergoing university presidential searches. The bill would require presidential candidates to be kept secret unless all five members agree to make their names public...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/03/16/iowa-house-oks-bills-affecting-public-university-curricula.

Straws in the Wind - Part 237

From Inside Higher Ed: A voting student position on the Iowa Board of Regents would be eliminated under a new bill advanced by the Hawkeye State’s House higher education subcommittee... If passed and signed into law, the bill would replace the student regent with a ninth one appointed by the governor. In addition, seven new nonvoting member seats would be established: three for students, two for state senators and two for state representatives. The proposed legislation also details several new policies and programs the board would be required to establish and would give members of the state’s General Assembly the ability to override board and university expenditures through a joint resolution.

The policies outlined align with the key higher education priorities for Republicans in the statehouse who hold a majority. They include:

• Establishing a post-tenure review process
• Developing approval standards for new academic programs
• Barring faculty senates from “exercising any governance authority over the institution”
• Conducting biennial reviews of all general education requirements and low-enrollment academic programs
• Creating an ombudsman office that will “investigate complaints of violations of state or federal law or board policy” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/01/23/iowa-lawmakers-seek-end-student-vote-board-regents.

Straws in the Wind - Part 111

From KCRG: Following a three-hour closed session, the Iowa Board of Regents announced its decision on faculty members who had praised Charlie Kirk’s death on social media. The board has ordered three universities to launch immediate investigations into their faculty and staff to determine if they broke social media policies. All staff under investigation will be placed on administrative leave or removed from the classroom.

Some board members shared frustrations, with one member saying no investigations were conducted prior to the boards decision, which prevented any terminations from being issued this week. Another member added, while some of the social media posts are “appalling”, the First Amendment protects those statements.

Source: https://www.kcrg.com/2025/09/17/board-regents-orders-investigation-into-university-staff-social-media-posts/.

Lawsuit against the Internet Archive: Important - Part 3 (Effects on Other Libraries)

Yesterday, we posted about the lawsuit challenging the Internet Archive's practice of digital library lending. The judge in that case decided against the practice.* (What the Archive did was to buy physical copies of books and then emulate what a traditional library does: lend them - digitally in this case - to a single user, one-by-one, for a fixed duration.) The case will be appealed according the the Internet Archive.

Inside Higher Ed has a lengthy article about the lawsuit. Of interest is the fact that some university libraries are doing what the Internet Archive does, a practice that may now be forbidden: 

...Controlled Digital Lending in Higher Ed

When librarians in higher education want to know whether an application of controlled digital lending is legal, many consult the Association of Research Librarians’ position statement, which attempts to offer a “good faith interpretation” of U.S. copyright law. Even so, the association recommends that librarians wishing to implement controlled digital lending consult a “competent” lawyer. What constitutes fair use may depend on the book, according to Alan Inouye, interim associate executive director of the American Library Association. For example, scanning and lending a digitized version of a decades-old book that has no publisher-issued ebook differs from doing the same with a recent New York Times best seller whose publisher offers an ebook option.

“When you’re in a lawsuit, there’re only two sides. It is inherently adversarial,” Inouye said. “For those of us who are not involved in a lawsuit, the issue is … incredibly nuanced. Usually, some things are more OK, and some things are less OK … There are no fair-use police or an authoritative guidebook saying exactly how it works. It is a judgment.” Some higher ed librarians on the ground agree.

“There’s always that fuzziness of whether or not this constitutes fair use,” said Yasmine Abou-El-Kheir, director of the Lapp Learning Commons at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where students attend predominantly online. “There’s a question of equity … Online students pay tuition like face-to-face students, and yet their access to materials might be hindered due to the fact that the material is just not available digitally.”

Many theological books needed by learners or professors at the seminary, for example, are out of print, Abou-El-Kheir added. When a student or scholar makes a direct request for a book in the collection for which no ebook exists, a seminary librarian may engage in controlled digital lending by digitizing part or all of the book, removing the print book from circulation and making the digitized version available for the same duration as is allowed for a print book. Still, Abou-El-Kheir wonders whether some instances would be considered “a bit more than fair use.”

Also, having the technology to honor the spirit of controlled digital lending is a “thorny issue,” Abou-El-Kheir said. The seminary’s library has found some workarounds to ensure that a link to a digitized book cannot be used by multiple students. For example, students are required to log in to access books that library staff digitized from physical copies. Nonetheless, the library seeks to migrate to another library catalog with built-in controlled digital lending functionalities.

But some institutions, including Iowa State University, steer clear of offering books through controlled digital lending. “From a library’s perspective, there’s legal risk,” Dawn Mick, head of the university library, said of the range of interpretations of controlled digital lending. “But also, where do you put this stuff?” referring to the books that must be held back when a digitized copy circulates.

Some institutions, such as the University of Hawai‘i, publish guidelines that seek to offer clarity, even if those guidelines raise other questions. For example, at Hawai‘i, a professor’s personal copy of a book that is not available at a reasonable price, is hard to find or is out of print is considered within bounds if the personal copy of the book is sequestered in the library when the digitized copy is made available. But the university does not elaborate on what constitutes a “reasonable” price. Course textbooks for which the publisher offers an ebook, regardless of price, are not candidates for controlled digital lending at the institution. In between the colleges that engage in controlled digital lending and those that do not lies a messy middle. Numerous college librarians declined to speak on the record about controlled digital lending, out of concern that the topic is a lightning rod...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/03/27/legal-blow-internet-archive-controlled-digital-lending.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/lawsuit-against-internet-archive_26.html.

Here, There, and Everywhere

In (early) retrospect, the UCLA decision to continue in fall as it was in spring and summer seems wise:

From AP: As waves of schools and businesses around the country are cleared to reopen, college towns are moving toward renewed shutdowns because of too many parties and too many COVID-19 infections among students. With more than 300 students at the University of Missouri testing positive for the coronavirus and an alarming 44% positivity rate for the surrounding county, the local health director Friday ordered bars to stop serving alcohol at 9 p.m. and close by 10 p.m.

Iowa’s governor has ordered all bars shut down around The University of Iowa and Iowa State, while the mayor of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, did the same in the hometown of the state’s flagship university.

“What we’re seeing in our violations is they’re coming late at night,” said Stephanie Browning, head of the health department for Columbia, Missouri. “Big groups gathering. They’re not wearing their masks, they’re not social distancing.”

In Utah, the city council in Provo overrode a mayoral veto to pass a mask mandate, which includes a $500 fine for organizing large mask-less gatherings, days before students return to Brigham Young University from around the country. But the council was nevertheless worried that college students sharing dorms, bathrooms and showers could become “super-spreaders” and bring the virus off campus, council chair George Handley said.

“We’re already seeing what’s happened across the country at other universities,” he said.

But a recent warehouse party organized by a BYU student’s promotional company called Young/Dumb also raised concern when pictures of hundreds of revelers without masks surfaced online...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/College-towns-growing-alarmed-over-outbreaks-15522146.php