Seth Boyes, News Editor
I feel we’ve been here before, but the state legislature is again considering a bill which would prevent Iowa’s institutions of higher learning from including some uncomfortable topics in the classroom. Brace yourself for a short swath of legislative language — the bill would require Iowa’s Board of Regents to adopt policies ensuring any general education courses offered “do not distort significant historical events or include any curriculum or other material that teaches identity politics or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States of America or the state of Iowa.”
The bill passed the Iowa House last week on a vote of 61-38, largely along party lines.
Like I said, I seem to recall similar bills being proposed in the past, not just here in Iowa but around the country, yet they all seem to be aimed at addressing a similar underlying concern. They question whether classroom instructors at various levels of education should be allowed to teach the next generation of Americans about unjust behavior within our country’s systems — assumably because some folks in our state feel that’s not the case. That it is not true, or perhaps that it has somehow never been true.
Of course, there is a degree of difficulty in proving when such motivations are behind the historic struggles experienced by a litany of people groups who call this country home. I think we can all agree it’s pretty rare for an elected official to admit the government has been motivated by racial prejudice.
Yet, it happened — more than 35 years ago.
More than 160 federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cosponsored a bill which became known at the Civil Liberties Act. The bill — signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 — provided restitution to Japanese Americans and other citizens of Japanese heritage who were wrongfully forced out of their homes and into U.S. internment camps during World War II — many were never able to reclaim what was taken from them. The Civil Liberties Act apologized for the country’s wartime actions, saying no examples of espionage were documented by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians before it relocated hundreds of thousands of people. The bill goes on to say the commission’s actions “were motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”
What’s more, the authors of the Civil Liberties Act called for the provision of “a public education fund to finance efforts to inform the public about the internment of such individuals so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event.”
I think that last part is particularly important — “so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event.”
The bipartisan group that got this bill off the ground almost three decades ago actually wanted future generations to know the U.S. had committed acts motivated by racial prejudice against its own people. The idea being that, if the public knew about what had happened, they wouldn’t be so willing to go along with it or some other permutation of the same ill ever again.
Yet, here we are in 2025, looking to force educators in Iowa to create policies preventing curriculum which might argue systemic racism and oppression is or was a reality within some U.S. institutions. If lawmakers in 1988 felt admitting to the past injustice and educating the public would prevent history from repeating itself, it’s not difficult to predict what might happen if lawmakers are successful in keeping such lessons out of the classroom.
And, today’s state legislators are calling for such policies to supposedly ensure educational courses here in the Hawkeye state “do not distort significant historical events.”
I don’t know about you, but I’d say the country’s massive interment of Japanese Americans was a significant historical event, and I’d say requiring history teachers to remain mute on Reagan’s recognition of the racial motivations behind it would be a distortion of said event — and I find it ironic such a distortion is being proposed by members of the late president’s own party.
Agree with Seth? Think he’s got it completely backwards or he’s missed the point entirely? Let your voice be heard. Letters to the editor may be emailed to editor@decorahleader.com or dropped off at 110 Washington St. Suite 4 in Decorah.
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