Letter to the editor: Don’t let the Board of Regents close the Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at UI

We, alumni/ae of the University of Iowa, write to you in a moment of profound alarm about what is happening to our beloved university. Public universities exist for a reason: they offer students access to a wide range of established academic disciplines, broad enough to challenge assumptions and rigorous enough to prepare graduates for professional life. That promise is undermined when programs like the Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) are dismantled because they are perceived as politically inconvenient or adverse to the mission of “workforce alignment”.

The University of Iowa was the first public university in the United States to admit women on an equal basis with men and the first to admit students regardless of race. In 1941, Lulu Merle Johnson became one of the first African American women in the United States to earn a doctorate in history. Her contemporaries at UI were renowned poet Margaret Walker and artist Elizabeth Catlett after whom the Catlett Residence Hall is named. In 1970, UI became the first state university to officially recognize and continuously fund a LGBT student organization. The Department of Women’s Studies, founded in 1974, was one of the first of its kind in the world. And, of course, we all know our basketball stars like Hall of Fame Inductee Michelle Edwards and Caitlin Clark. Today, Governor Kim Reynolds and the Board of Regents are shamefully dismantling this legacy by pressuring UI administrators to close entire fields of study. The Board will vote to close the GWSS department and major, along with African American Studies, this April.

GWSS alums know how important the department has been to the university, students, local community, and the state of Iowa. The GWSS Bachelor of Arts degree and the GWSS graduate certificate helped us to attain positions in local, state, and federal governments. We are represented in business administration, public health, medicine, education, and law. We are teachers, researchers, dancers, nurses, doctors, psychologists, social workers, artists, attorneys, and labor leaders, serving communities within and beyond the U.S.

But this isn’t about professionalisation alone. It is about the future of civic engagement and critical thinking in Iowa and the US. Given what we have learned from the Epstein files about how money, political power, and gender converge, the timing is stunning. The closure of GWSS steals opportunities for Iowans to learn the critical thinking skills necessary for the pursuit of freedom and justice in this country, and beyond. If it had not been for the department of GWSS, we would not have learned how meatpacking plants pollute low-income neighborhoods in rural Iowa towns, the reasons for our high maternal mortality rates, or the histories of sterilization of Native American and poor white people in the state in the 1960s and 1970s. Iowans from generations of farming families will lose the opportunity to learn how to better care for the land in sustainable ways that improve the health of their crops, families, and communities. Thanks to our faculty, who come from many disciplinary backgrounds, we were taught to see value in disagreements and differences that have been critical to our growth as professionals. Far from indoctrinating us into a specific ideology, they taught us to unpack how knowledge is produced, by whom, and for whom. Their mentorship made us better thinkers.

The administration has moved swiftly to reassure current majors that they and others who have declared the major will be able to complete it. This messaging is similar to what was conveyed to Social Justice majors last year on the closure of that degree. However, administrators are mistaken if they think students are concerned only about their own ability to complete their studies. Current students and alumni/ae care deeply about protecting intellectual freedom for generations that come after us.

The Social Justice major, which was first offered in 2016 by GWSS, was closed in 2025 as part of an ongoing attack on academic freedom and free thought by the Board of Regents and Governor Kim Reynolds. The timing of this closure was ironic since Spring 2025 was a stellar year for UI’s GWSS department. An external review applauded the faculty’s intellectual community, high-impact research, excellent teaching, and extensive service for the institution and community. Despite the loss of research support, five of eight faculty members published books. GWSS faculty won many awards for their teaching, research, and public engagement. Administrators often held up the department as a model for outcomes assessment and for providing a year-long, rigorous research-based capstone experience for all majors. The Regents, however, unfortunately, take the number of GWSS majors as a singular metric of success, even as students continue to flock to GWSS courses.

In the past few years, GWSS has lost many prospective majors due to confusion about its status and the closure of its Social Justice Major. It did not help that the UI administration kept students out of the conversations to combine GWSS and other programs like African American Studies into the proposed School of Social and Cultural Analysis, and then the proposal was rejected. Meanwhile, the Board of Regents established the new Center for Intellectual Freedom, which is running despite little student participation. These actions demonstrate the ideological desires of a few infringing on the academic freedoms and aspirations of many. Iowa’s political leaders have not only belittled education and professional development in fields oriented toward equity and justice, but they also seem to find these ideas inconvenient and scary.

We hope that the people of Iowa and the UI alumni will recognize that the decision to eliminate this department is not an attack on gender, women’s, and sexuality studies alone. It is an attack on any department or program, large or small, that encourages critical thinking.

The workforce alignment initiative behind this cut mentions prioritizing workforce needs, and the GWSS department is an important pipeline for many of Iowa’s most urgent areas of need, including nursing, teaching, obstetric care, and other careers. The balance sheet shows tiny savings and tremendous losses for a flagship university and its students: the budget math does not add up. Together, we can send a message to the university, the Board of Regents and the politicians that cutting programs that serve our communities and students is unacceptable.

Let’s call the Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the UI president , the governor and each member of the Board of Regents and hold them accountable for this attack on intellectual and professional freedom. Let’s flood their inboxes with emails. Let’s tell them we will resist this assault on Iowa’s legacy and right to learn. #HandsoffGWSS 

Testimonials

I am a child of Iowa. I grew up baling hay and detasseling corn; I am what some may call a farm kid. I worked hard to get to and through the University of Iowa – I cobbled together as many scholarships as I could and worked three jobs to graduate debt-free. I remember my first semester of college, when I decided to enroll in the Intro to Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies class on a whim. I remember the objections from my friends and families that such a class could really teach me anything, but I needed the credit. Each week I found myself challenged. This was supposed to be a class just to fulfill a credit! The ideas presented to me was like a foreign language, not so much in its political agenda, but its intellectual commitments to critical thinking and analytical depth. Concepts so commonplace and yet so dense with power revealed themselves to me in a collaborative learning environment. Simply put, GWSS helped me to question certainties. The transactions of curriculum crumbled around me as a new perspective took form. This was intellectual freedom. Years ago, the buzzword uttered by many Iowans was “brain drain.” Fear of losing Iowans’ next generation of thinkers abounded. However, we soothed ourselves knowing that the Des Moines metro area was steadily growing as rural communities like my own silently suffered. We began to believe that Iowa’s failing education system could be turned around as we conflated “intellectual freedom” with educational quality. We’ve now convinced ourselves we’ve moved on. We’ve put bandaids over bullet holes. A commitment to educational quality demands us to consider disciplines of study as fields to tend to, rather than commodities to quantify. Yet, for many it is safer and more politically expedient to to gut disciplines we believe pose a threat to Iowa’s reputation as the same people captiously bemoan the era of fracture and diffidence we live in. Only through an education in GWSS have I come to question just-so propositions that we believe we must conform to. Only through an education in GWSS have I come to see my fate implicated in the communities around me. GWSS cultivates a collaborative sensibility of analytical precision and practical community formation that has benefitted the thousands of students who have decided to enroll in its course offerings. Many enroll on a whim, perhaps with doubt of its educational merit like I admittedly did. I was taught early on that the purpose of a college education was to get a good job that will keep the lights on. GWSS untwined me from that logic, enriched my sense of the world, and made plain the necessity of community. All while keeping the lights on.

 —Jack Lauer (GWSS BA 2022), PhD candidate in History, University of Michigan

I don’t think I would have my current teaching position at the University of Toronto without GWSS. As a then international PhD student, GWSS gave me a sense of belonging, seeing me in ways that I wanted to be seen, while also allowing me to see and appreciate others. More specifically, it taught me to approach feminist theory critically, unpacking the relationships between gender, sexuality, race, Indigeneity and labour, which are central to the past, present and future of the US. The GWSS Major undergraduate classrooms, where I was a TA, also shaped my pedagogy in profound ways. I learnt to have disagreements that were intense and joyous. People like Rachel Williams and Lina-Maria Murillo, who are now no longer at UI, taught me to recognise that each student is unique and brings different kinds of cultural capital to the classroom. Losing the Major will not only hurt undergraduate students but also graduate workers who will lose precious interdisciplinary teaching experience that is very different from what they might be used to in their ‘home’ departments.

 — Dr. Rajorshi Das (GWSS certificate ’21, PhD ‘25), assistant professor (CLTA) and undergraduate coordinator, Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto 

In May of 2025, I graduated with a BA in Social Justice; a degree once housed in the department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Three months prior, my degree was hastily and unjustly terminated by the Iowa Board of Regents. After four years of rigorous, expansive work, hearing the closure of my degree felt nothing less than crushing. To see the foundation of who I had become placed on the chopping block as a political spectacle was deeply personal. 

 An education within the GWSS program taught me to think critically about the roles of power and each person’s influence on their environment, especially in the era of AI and mass censorship. I learned to think beyond my familiar world, which challenged me to become a more responsible, caring, empathetic, and analytical member of society. It taught me to see the needs of my community as needs of my own. The cross-disciplinary approach provided in GWSS creates an invaluable, holistic view of many professional fields that benefit from these perspectives. In my work as a legal assistant, I have been able to directly apply my GWSS education to create more accessible avenues to legal services for clients. Lessons of collectivism translate greatly into the workplace by productively navigating team dynamics and in personal daily life through resource sharing and a growing awareness of those who may be unlike ourselves. 

Most importantly, though, the quality of mentorship within GWSS far exceeds any expectation. Having those role models to learn from instilled great confidence in my abilities and provided guidance in post-college life. They make you feel like you truly matter, and future students will lose that personal, intellectual nurturing. My mind and heart are forever molded by my experiences within the GWSS program.

 — Sara E. Koppy (BA Social Justice 2025)

 My graduate certificate in GWSS has invaluably shaped how I show up as an instructor of communication to STEM undergraduate and graduate students. GWSS courses, like Foundations of Feminist Inquiry, invited me to zoom out and closely examine how knowledge, power, and history shape the stories we tell, especially in medicine, science, and other fields that often present themselves as objective. That foundation directly informs how I approach communication in the classroom: as something relational, consequential, and deeply human. 

The GWSS certificate has been especially meaningful in my work teaching about health and healthcare. Training I received in the Global Reproduction and Global History of Race and Medicine courses helps me guide students, many of whom come from different cultural contexts, toward more nuanced understandings of health, healthcare, and health technologies. Just as importantly, the opportunities GWSS gave me to teach about topics such as gender, sexuality, and social justice taught me how to build classrooms grounded in care, curiosity, and trust. I see the influence of my GWSS training most clearly when students begin to ask more thoughtful questions about their writing, their assumptions, and their responsibilities to the communities they hope to serve as scientists.

 — Dr. Berkley Conner (PhD in Communication Studies, GWSS certificate, 2024), assistant teaching professor, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University 

 Simply put, GWSS taught me how to think critically. From anthropologists to artists, I benefited from an exceptional research and teaching faculty at GWSS. What I learned in the BA program laid the foundation for my academic career. GWSS equipped me with the tools to pursue interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research — an essential marker of excellence in any serious research institution. I model my university teaching today on my mentors from GWSS, who rigorously engaged us with theory and empirical inquiry while treating us with compassion as we learned as students and grew as young people. 

As a BA student, I learned about structural inequality, power relations, and practices of resilience from and with women incarcerated at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women during a GWSS-organized practicum. Like my peers, what I learned during these four years extended far beyond discipline and academia, shaping my intellectual commitments, pedagogy, and sense of responsibility to the public. 

 What is happening to the program and department at UIowa is neither unprecedented nor an isolated case. By aligning itself with global anti-gender ideology and suppressing academic freedom, the University of Iowa is actively impoverishing its own intellectual life and undermining its obligations to students, scholars, and civil society.

 —Dr. Holly Patch (BA in Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies 2011), postdoctoral research associate at the Professorship for Sociology of Gender Relations at TU Dortmund University, Germany

GWSS programs have provided exemplary spaces for open inquiry and constructive dialogue that are central to the University of Iowa vision and values. GWSS classrooms have offered students rigorous dialogue and debate that spans across disciplines, given the faculty composition and backgrounds. As an alum of GWSS, having received a graduate certificate from the program, I am extremely disappointed at the possibility of the department’s closure. As an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I can attest how my education at the GWSS department has been transformative for my teaching and research. Because of GWSS, I have become a better educator training the next generation of higher education leaders in Iowa and Nebraska to lead through uncertain and complex environments with integrity and aligned with their institutional values. Moreover, GWSS has provided me with a rigorous knowledge base to help my research on poverty and precarity among college students. My research aims to inform policy and practice that improves college student graduation outcomes, which is one of the major issues facing Iowa colleges and universities. Are these impacts captured in the workforce alignment review of programs? I am worried a narrow focus on enrollment numbers and graduate employment outcomes undermines the larger impact that GWSS makes in advancing culture, education, and community vitality that are part of the University of Iowa mission, along with economic vitality. GWSS closure will forever mark a turning point in the history of the University of Iowa for the institution’s departure from its stated mission, vision and values.

 —Dr. Milad Mohebali (GWSS graduate certificate 2022)

I can state from my own personal experience that the assertion that GWSS is not relevant to the workforce is false. My bachelor’s degree is in the equivalent major at another institution, and I earned the GWSS graduate certificate at the University of Iowa in 2022. The certificate on my C.V. is the reason I have gotten teaching and research opportunities I now cherish and enjoy (my current employer cited this specifically as the reason she was able to hire me in my current role). The most generous interpretation of the efforts to dismantle GWSS, African American Studies, and related programs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences is a wholesale misunderstanding of what a University does and the role it plays in society. I am inclined to believe that the truth is something less generous than that. Universities exist not only to train workers, but to prepare citizens to create and maintain a functioning and equitable society. As a GWSS major, I can personally attest to this transformative power. The dismantling of these programs and departments (and the transformative experiences they offer students outside of the majors housed within them) is a willful misunderstanding of this vital function. Whatever miniscule overhead these programs incur, their transformative power for the University and society is worth it many times over. I am so disappointed in Iowa for taking this action, if they indeed choose to do so.

 —Scott Olson, PhD (GWSS certificate 2022, PhD Anthropology 2023)

 The Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Iowa was far more than an academic department to me; it was a vital intellectual home that fundamentally shaped my scholarly identity. As a doctoral student, the program provided a rigorously supportive environment where I was challenged to think across disciplines and question systemic power structures. The faculty were not merely professors but mentors who modeled how to balance incisive research with ethical engagement. Their impact on my pedagogy is indelible. They taught me that teaching is a radical act of care and critical inquiry, influencing how I now foster inclusivity and critical consciousness in my own classroom. In my research, they pushed me to look beyond conventional narratives, grounding my work in intersectional frameworks that I would not have mastered elsewhere. The decision to close this department is a profound blow to academic freedom. By dismantling a program with a 50-year legacy of championing marginalized voices, the university signals that scholarly merit is secondary to political pressure. It sets a dangerous precedent where inquiry into gender and sexuality is treated as expendable, silencing essential conversations and impoverishing the intellectual landscape for future scholars

 —Dr. Michelle Laura Flood, (PhD in Communication Studies and graduate certificate in GWSS, 2022), assistant professor of practice at St. John Fisher University

I began my doctoral work at University of Iowa six months before COVID hit. Candidly, I didn’t even know who Kim Reynolds was, but she made sure we found out via her reckless handling of this global pandemic. The UI Board of Regents stood by her through and through, demanding that all instructors teach hybrid (both online and in-person) courses at the height of a global health crisis. Mask mandates were nonexistent. Vulnerable communities were not only given no protection, but were also told in no uncertain terms that our contracts could be terminated if we advocated for safe classrooms. Disenfranchisement of the vulnerable has increased by truly epic proportions in the space of just a few years. Since my thesis defense in early 2024, UI has canceled its DEI program, terminated its Social Justice BA, attempted to shut down our illustrious and inclusive International Writing Program (which was thankfully rescued by fundraising efforts), and is now eliminating the Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and its corresponding Bachelor of Arts program. I can say without reservation that my GWSS courses were my most personally and professionally enriching during my five years at UI. Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo’s Feminist Methodologies course challenged me to conceive of meaningful academic work in new ways, challenging me to think inclusively, write with awareness and acuity, and, most importantly, translate my scholarship to public-facing analysis and activism. Dr. Marie Kruger’s Introduction to Trauma Studies was rigorous and involved like no course I’ve ever taken, forcing us to get comfortable discussing collective pain and tragedy in scholarly and humanitarian contexts — and doing so with compassion above all else. These courses felt like water in the desert during the long, isolated days of peak COVID. My GWSS classes felt intimate in a way I’ve rarely experienced despite taking place via Zoom. I can only imagine what they would have been like in person, but I do know this: By eliminating the GWSS department, Reynolds and the UI Board of Regents are undermining UI’s rich history of being on the frontlines of inclusion, advocacy, and progressive values. (See full history in letter proper.) What this administration is prioritizing runs staggeringly counter to everything public education in Iowa has stood for over the course of nearly a century. Severing students’ access and connection to critical thinking opportunities is to fly in the face of the very principles this administration claims to value: freedom, autonomy, and individual expression. We implore them to take a moment to reconsider.

 —Dr. Annie Burkhart (GWSS certificate 2019 CU Boulder, UI GWSS alum 2021, UI English PhD 2024) instructor of Writing Studies, Department of English, University of Northern Colorado 

 My husband and I established the Stephen Lynn Smith scholarship in 2017 to recognize students who have demonstrated a commitment to social justice. GWSS has hosted this scholarship to the benefit of those recipients. While the scholarship will continue, GWSS must also in light of the testimonials shared here. Keep GWSS open and vital.

 —David McCartney (friend of GWSS) 

I learned and grew so much from my participation in the UI GWSS certificate program. What I learned in the program informed my research process as well as my analysis and findings. GWSS continues to provide essential frameworks for understanding contemporary events and the ways that power operates. A public university that abandons GWSS as a program is weaker for having done so and does not serve the state or students as effectively.

 —Cristina Ortiz (GWSS 2013, PhD Anthropology 2013), associate professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota Morris 

 The GWSS department led me to become a women and gender studies professor. I am indebted to the scholarship I was able to create in this space, the funds I received from a fellowship/award in that department, and the beautiful community I was a part of. The department has and will always be a space for growth and change.

 –Dr Micki Burdick (GWSS 2023)

 During this current political moment, freedom of speech and intellectual freedom are being challenged. My research focused on learning more about this moment through the lens of book banning. In my dissertation, I explored high school students’ responses to young adult literature that has been banned or challenged that features feminist themes. I wanted to learn more about the topics and questions that were discussed, as well as the discourses and emotions that youth readers drew on when reading and discussing these narratives. My findings suggest that one way to more fully engage in relationality is opening up space to discover our differences and affirm them. GWSS was foundational for my research-in terms of developing my ideas, providing essential theoretical frameworks for understanding my data, honing my critical thinking skills, and understanding myself as a researcher.

– Katie Priske (PhD 2025)

I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2023 with a PhD in Teaching and Learning and a graduate certificate in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. Now, as a tenure track professor at California State University Channel Islands, I teach a doctoral level seminar for our EdD program titled Feminist Inquiry in Education Research. This course asks students to engage with foundational and contemporary feminist scholarship — including Black feminism, queer and trans feminisms, and decolonial feminist thought — to analyze and critique dominant narratives and practices in education. This course emphasizes the affordances and limitations of feminist inquiry in disrupting traditional research paradigms and creating transformative possibilities for justice-oriented scholarship. 

 Developing this course would not be possible without my studies and experiences within the GWSS program at the University of Iowa. Thus far, it has been the most exciting and rewarding course I’ve had the pleasure to teach, and my evaluations echoed a similar experience for the students enrolled. More broadly, the greatest gift the graduate certificate in GWSS afforded me was the ability to think, write, and teach in interdisciplinary ways that I would not have otherwise been able to accomplish with my PhD in Teaching and Learning alone.

 —Dr. Niki Amato (PhD 2023) 

 My experience in GWSS was integral to my career development and achieve meaningful success in my current professional role. The GWSS graduate program at the University of Iowa is cross-disciplinary and requires students to collaborate and translate ideas across subjects and research methods. In my work on NHPA (historical preservation) compliance, I am required to communicate technical information across professional specialties and collate standardized recommendations from anthropologists, landscape architects, archaeologists, building supervisors, and construction managers. More importantly, I have to communicate that information in support of government-to-government consultation with Tribal Nations. That work not only requires me to effectively communicate technical information across professional specialties, but identify shared values and garner consensus for any given project. The relationship between Tribal Nations and the United States federal government and National Park Service has not been historically positive. GWSS provided me the skills to address that reality and build trust across stakeholders through shared values of cultural sovereignty and natural resources preservation—all of which are contained by the seemingly simple process of ‘technical communication.’ Further, the GWSS program at Iowa was the only department where I could take coursework that explicitly mirrored that multi-disciplinary environment of cultural and natural resources management. I took courses with Professor Maurine Neiman (Biology/GWSS) that brought life science, biomedical science, and humanities students together in the classroom. GWSS 5000 regularly attracts students from CLAS, Public Health, Education, and the Graduate College. At the University of Iowa, it is the only department that explicitly includes opportunities (beyond an individual professor’s research interest) to consider scientific approaches to the humanities and humanistic approaches to the sciences. 

 —Dominic Dongilli (GWSS 2020, PhD 2025)

I graduated in May 2025 with my bachelor of arts degree in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. I am so proud of the degree in which I received my education, but am disheartened by the institution that provided it and the blatant disregard for intellectual freedom and opportunity; something the university has recently claimed to take pride in providing via its new ‘Center for Intellectual Freedom.’ The center, which, by the way, is struggling to obtain enrollment in its courses while the GWSS department is simultaneously facing shutdown due to its supposed lack of reach. The opening of this center followed shortly after the Board of Regents rejection of the School of Social and Cultural Analysis without considering its creation, and the termination of the Bachelor of Arts in Social Justice and American Studies. As my undergraduate education was coming to a close, I can admit that I was worried about job prospects, knowing that my degree didn’t directly funnel into one set path (and that the state in which I have resided my whole life does not support nor value my education). However, that concern never led me astray from pursuing the education I wholeheartedly had chosen and wanted for myself. If anything, it only kept the fire under me burning. I knew my GWSS degree had immense value, even if there were some who questioned its validity. The faculty, my peers, and my own passions and ambitions were what allowed me to succeed in my education. Not the University of Iowa nor the Board of Regents. They did however, along with the state of the world, fuel my need and desire to walk away from my undergraduate career at the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts degree in GWSS. I didn’t learn to memorize formulas in my undergraduate career. I did learn to think critically about the structures and institutions in which I am part and which make up the world around me. I did learn to unpack biases, my own included. I did learn about the lasting impacts of history on marginalized communities, and how the same atrocities are still being committed, only under a different name. Most importantly, I learned how to learn and unlearn and relearn, and the importance of such a skill. Being open to growth, new information, being wrong; these are things everyone can and should be practicing. But the current administration does not approve of that. They want us to be afraid, to be complicit, to follow blindly. And the dismantling of the GWSS program speaks to that. 

A degree in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies is something that can be incorporated across all disciplines. To be a culturally competent doctor, a business owner who knows how to mitigate bias and foster an inclusive workplace, a farmer who recognizes the importance of the holistic health of their employees, a lawyer who understands the importance of our individual rights to life and liberty, a professor who creates an environment conducive for their student’s learning and wellbeing, a journalist who knows how to critique media and write the stories we need to hear. The GWSS department is valuable and serves far beyond those who major in the field. Of many introductory courses for GWSS and Social Justice alike, only a small percentage are actively pursuing the degree. Many are signed up to fulfill General Education requirements, or simply because they thought it might be interesting; and they walk away with knowledge and skills that can be applied in all walks of life. Depriving students of the opportunity to learn and explore subjects they may not otherwise have come in contact with or chosen to engage with runs completely counter to the purpose of universities. It is a direct contradiction to the mission, vision, and core values that the University of Iowa has placed upon itself. The mission, vision, and core values of the University of Iowa are as follows below. The mission being to ‘provide exceptional teaching and transformative educational experiences that prepare students for success and fulfilment in an increasingly diverse and global environment; advance scholarly and creative endeavor through leading-edge research and artistic production; and bring learning and discovery into the service of the people of the state of Iowa, the nation, and the world, improving lives through education, health care, arts and culture, and community and economic vitality’ (University of Iowa Strategic Plan, 2022-2027). The vision being ‘The University of Iowa will be the destination of first choice for talented students, faculty, and staff from wide-ranging backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints, who will craft new chapters of exploration, discovery, creation, and engagement. Together, we will advance the university’s standing as one of the most distinguished public flagship universities in the country’ (University of Iowa Strategic Plan, 2022-2027). And finally, the University of Iowa’s core values being creativity, community, excellence, inclusion, and integrity. Creativity. We discover new ways to see the world and make it better. We are dedicated to pursuing new knowledge and artistic creation and using those discoveries to have a transformative impact on our state and in our local, national, and global communities.’ ‘Community. We are committed to collaboration and active engagement. We value the contributions of every individual, while recognizing that our greatest successes come when we work together toward creative contributions — often across disciplines and departments, and often with community partners.’ ‘Excellence. We expect the best from ourselves in all that we do. We measure ourselves by exacting standards, honor high aspiration and achievement, and expect all members of the university community to strive for excellence.’ ‘Inclusion. We welcome and respect all members of our community. We are committed to ensuring access, respecting differences, and fostering a supportive environment where all individuals are valued, empowered, and encouraged to contribute to our shared success.’ ‘Integrity. We are honest, fair, respectful, and ethical. We hold ourselves to the highest standard of professional and scholarly ethics, are accountable for our decisions and actions, exercise responsible stewardship of the resources with which we are entrusted, and treat one another with honesty and fairness.’ (University of Iowa Strategic Plan, 2022-2027). 

Tell me how then the University of Iowa dismantling the GWSS program — a program that both in its nature and in its efforts are centered around the very things listed above — is practicing its own mission, vision, and core values. It’s not. Ridding itself of the GWSS department will only hurt those the university claims to serve. It will only undermine its purpose. I am forever grateful to those with whom I shared classrooms, conversations, and care over the course of my undergraduate career in the GWSS department. I am a better person because of it.

 —Eva Packer, (BA 2025)

As an alum of the University of Iowa’s Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Department, I am deeply troubled by the dismantling of disciplines such GWSS and Social Justice Studies under the rationale of ‘workforce alignment.’ This erasure ignores the reality that these programs have long equipped students with precisely the analytical, communicative, and ethical skills that the modern workforce and our democracy require. As a first-generation college graduate and the child of immigrants, my choice to study GWSS was often questioned. Yet it is exactly this education that has guided and grounded my professional journey. I have carried the frameworks I learned in GWSS into every role I have held, from my work at NYU’s School of Global Public Health and the New York City Department of Health, to state-level public health initiatives, and now in my current work advancing mental health equity. The department taught me how to apply intersectional and decolonial analysis to real-world challenges, from health access to policy design, and to do so with compassion and accountability to community. Through classes like Diversity & Power, volunteering as an abortion doula at the Emma Goldman Clinic, and co-facilitating healthy relationship courses at the Mitchellville Women’s Prison, I learned not only about systems of power, but how to intervene in them thoughtfully and effectively. These experiences continue to shape how I lead, collaborate, and imagine more just futures within institutions far larger and more rigid than any classroom. GWSS graduates are the workforce Iowa claims to prioritize: educators, healthcare professionals, organizers, researchers, and policymakers committed to ethical leadership and community well-being. Dismantling GWSS and its programs betrays the very values that once made the University of Iowa a beacon of accessible, equity-centered education. I call on the university’s leadership and the Board of Regents to uphold, not abandon, that legacy. The future of Iowa, and the future of public education, depends on our collective commitment to intellectual freedom, ethical rigor, and the right to learn. 

—Logina Mostafa (GWSS 2019)

 My time both teaching in and taking classes within GWSS at Iowa have prepared me for a successful career in teaching and research in my current position as an educator at another R1 university. The close mentorship and guidance I received from the GWSS faculty profoundly shaped the way I think about scholarship and education. There is no more importance space to uphold the principles of a robust humanities education than by reifying the importance of a program like GWSS, which encourages us to reach across disciplinary divides, think carefully and critically about taken-for-granted assumptions in public culture, and approach difference with curiosity. It will be yet another blight upon Iowa’s reputation if they do not protect and defend this program.

—Dr. Michelle Colpean (GWSS certificate, PhD Communication 2020)

As a librarian, I would not have the strong ethical and critical thinking skills that I possess without my experiences in GWSS. In my current position at the UI Libraries, I bring my analytical, inclusive, and intersectional frameworks with me every day. This allows me to ensure that the UI Libraries provides critical services for well-rounded research, maintains a welcoming environment, and provides growth opportunities for our students. GWSS pushed me to get involved with my community through direct action; to think deeper and differently about my areas of interest; and provided me with a network of long-lasting connections to peers and faculty that wasn’t developed in my second major. These personal, professional, and academic skills were carried with me when I gained my master’s in Library and Information Science degree, and into my professional work at the UI Library Annex. GWSS prepared me to work with a diverse group of people, to be a strong community leader, and to ensure a safe and welcoming workplace for all (both temporary workers and student employees). It is devastating to know that a program like GWSS — with its strong commitment to developing academically rigorous, socially conscious, and ethically-minded students — may be disbanded along with other important cultural studies majors like the African American Studies department. I came to college as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa specifically because it was maintaining cultural studies majors (like African American Studies, Native American Studies, GWSS, etc.) at a time when the schools in my home state of Arizona were cutting the same programs. It’s sickening to see that Iowa — once a state that promised progress and inclusivity for ALL citizens and students, a leader in LGBTQ issues like same sex marriage, etc. — is now behaving the same as the state I once fled. These actions make me question my continued employment at the University of Iowa and my citizenship as an Iowan. I sincerely hope the Board of Regents sees the elimination of these majors for what it is — a restriction on free and open academic study and discourse. Without these majors and their specialized and knowledgeable faculty members, we are losing our ability to pursue ALL areas of interest. If the University of Iowa takes away these areas of study, how can the institution truly say that it’s standing for academic freedom and integrity?

 —Madde Hoberg (GWSS BA, English BA 2014, MLIS 2021)

The GWSS program brought me closer to myself, encouraged me to become more curious and critical of ideas often taken for granted. My experience in the program has made me a more thoughtful and considerate community member, colleague, friend, and will absolutely impact the way my partner and I raise our children.

—Alison Holmes, (GWSS 2024) 

I did not enter college planning a career in violence prevention. I found that path because I took a GWSS course. What I expected to be an elective became the turning point of my education and my life. GWSS showed me a field of work I did not know existed and gave me a sense of purpose I had never imagined for myself. The program strengthened my ability to think carefully, write clearly, and communicate with people whose experiences differ from my own. Just as importantly, the mentorship of faculty and the community of students helped me see a future I could realistically pursue. Through GWSS I found internships, professional connections, and the confidence to continue my education and enter a profession I otherwise would never have discovered. Today, I work in violence prevention education. My job is not theoretical. I train students and professionals, translate research into practice, and help institutions build safer communities. I am able to do this work because of the preparation I received through GWSS, and I would not be qualified for this role, or many similar roles across universities, schools, healthcare settings, and community organizations nationwide, without it. There is an entire professional field that depends on people with this training. Many people assume GWSS does not lead to real work. My career, and many others like mine, demonstrate that this is simply not true. Closing GWSS would not just remove a major from a catalog. It would mean the University of Iowa is no longer preparing students for careers in prevention education and related professions that communities increasingly rely on. Future students will lose the opportunity I had to discover meaningful work and be trained to do it well.

—Isabella Brauhn Kendall, MPH (BA GWSS 2018, graduate certificate GWSS 2020)