For the second time in less than a month, it appears the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom finally has a director.
On Oct. 20, the Board of Regents announced it had selected Carson Holloway of the University of Nebraska at Omaha to be the center’s director from three finalists for the job. Last week, the regents announced they had received an email from Holloway turning down the position. The professor said he was taking a job at the University of Florida instead.
The board then turned its attention to the other two finalists, and on Thursday morning selected Brian Lai, an associate professor of political science at UI.
The selection, first, of Nebraska’s Holloway and, now, of UI’s Lai, followed a nationwide search for someone to lead the center.
Lai joined UI’s Department of Political Science as an assistant professor in 2001, after earning his Ph.D. at Emory University. In 2020, he was one of four finalists for the position of vice president for Student Life. Lai’s research focuses on international relations, their connection to American politics and terrorism.
The center is currently without a leader, or any staff members, since the board removed UI economic professor Lucien de Castro, the interim director, who was also the center’s only staff member. The then-interim director was one of 62 candidates who submitted an application during the search for the center’s first permanent director. He was not selected as one of the finalists.
The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller, who has been closely covering the center, described de Castro’s “year-plus time in charge” as “plagued by a power struggle with the regents and university over spending, hiring, course creation, policies, and communications, among other things.”
According to its site, the Center for Intellectual Freedom is “a dedicated hub for exploring the foundational ideas, texts, and traditions that have shaped the American constitutional order and free societies.” Republicans in the Iowa Legislature passed a law in 2025 requiring UI to create the center. The law even specified the center’s name. According to the lawmakers who backed the bill, they were concerned that UI students were not being sufficiently exposed to ideas the Republican majority approves of.
The center’s initial two class offerings were supposed to begin in January this year, but were canceled when only two students signed up for one of the classes, and four signed up for the other.
Classes by the center were then scheduled for March.
“Both classes count for one credit hour and are graded on a pass/fail basis,” the Daily Iowan explained in February. “Political and Economic Institutions in the United States will feature lectures from CEOs and former Republican Congressman Greg Ganske, pending approval.”
“The American Culture and Values class will offer various lectures titled, ‘Freedom: Its Costs and Benefits,’ ‘Self-Reliance as an American Value,’ and ‘Why Capitalism Rocks!’”
Those classes were also canceled before they were held.
In response to the overwhelming student indifference to the center and its offerings, the Republican majorities in the legislature passed a new law this year mandating all UI students take at least six course-credit hours of center classes in order to graduate. The requirement that students learn center-approved lessons in intellectual freedom takes effect in 2028.
“The CIF restart, the Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa, did not work this past year,” Board of Regents President Robert Cramer said during the regents’ meeting on Thursday. “So we’re making changes, and we look forward to working with the new permanent director.”
As of Thursday morning’s meeting, the regents were still working on the official letter offering Lai the director’s job.
