Robert Cramer was unanimously elected president of the Iowa Board of Regents by his fellow regents at a special meeting on Wednesday. Cramer was appointed to the board by Gov. Kim Reynolds two years ago.
The special meeting was called after Sherry Bates, who had served president of the Board of Regents since February last year, unexpectedly announced on Monday she was resigning from the board. Bates, whose term was scheduled to end in 2029, said she wanted to spend more time with her family and make room for “the next generation of Regent leadership.”
Cramer’s election as president of the board that oversees the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, comes 12 years after the Iowa Senate rejected Gov. Terry Branstad’s attempt to appoint him to the Board of Regents.
The Senate, then controlled by Democrats, didn’t confirm Cramer largely because of his rightwing political views and activism. At the time Cramer was the chair of The Family Leader, the rightwing Christian political group founded by Bob Vander Plaats, and best known for its opposition to LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights and its support for policies that adhere to conservative evangelical Christian priorities.
Cramer, who earned a BS in construction engineering from ISU in 1990 and works as an executive at his family’s construction company, was politically active before becoming The Family Leader’s board chair. In 2001, he was part of a group of conservative Christians who opposed the Des Moines City Council extending the city’s civil rights protections to gays and lesbians.
“We should not be elevating chosen behaviors to a protected class,” Cramer told the council. “I hope you don’t believe this is the end of the homosexual agenda. This is only the beginning.”
At that time, Cramer was a member of the Johnston Community School District Board of Directors. When Cramer’s nomination to be a regent was rejected in 2013, Senate Democrats said they were concerned about his commitment to academic freedom given his efforts to remove two books from the freshman high school reading list in Johnston while a school board member.
The books — I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier — are both considered classics and are widely used in high schools around the country. Both books are frequently targeted by book-banning groups. Cramer said at the time that he considered the books inappropriate for freshmen, even though he had voted to approve the reading list they were part of. If the books remained, Cramer wanted an alternative classroom set up for students who parents didn’t approve of the reading material. The books weren’t removed, and no alternative classroom was created.
Cramer assured senators he was committed to academic freedom and that concerns about his conservative political views and advocacy were misplaced, because he would be fair to everyone as a regent. Not enough senators were convinced and his appointment was rejected.
The following year, Cramer ran for Congress as a Republican in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. His press release announcing his candidacy describes him as “a full spectrum conservative.” Cramer finished second in the June 2014 Republican primary.
Ten years after he was rejected by the Senate, Gov. Reynolds nominated Cramer to the Board of Regents again. The Senate, now with a Republican supermajority in charge, voted to confirm Cramer. Every Democrat in the Senate voted against him.
“I asked [Cramer] in recent conversation to describe how his views had changed [since 2013]. His response was, ‘Not that much,'” Sen. Herman Quirmbach, a Democrat from Ames and running member of the Education Committee, said during the floor debate on the nomination. “I don’t think that a sterile expression of respect for every student is sufficient to lead our great universities. Our universities have to be warm, welcoming, supportive places for all students of all backgrounds. I don’t think that Mr. Cramer is capable of doing that.”
After his election on Wednesday, Bates said he has three goals as president. First, he said he wanted to have the state’s three universities provide “an affordable education with a good rate of return on that investment.” His second goal is to improve academic performance at the universities, so they “provide academic excellence … from the top to the bottom.”
“To provide a fair and balanced place for vigorous debate,” Cramer said, describing his third goal. “And that’s what a lot of our work has been this last year is just to create an atmosphere where students can engage. And college is a great place to learn, to learn new things, to find out what you believe, but we just want a fair and balanced place, where students can do that.”
Cramer described his goal of a “fair and balanced” university in somewhat different language in a July email to Republican legislators about curriculum changes in response to the legislature banning all DEI efforts at the state’s universities.
“I’m not afraid of whacko wokeness if my conservative views are presented as well,” he said. “I’m confident our values can prevail if presented fairly. So we’re trying to craft a policy on how things are presented instead of banning certain topics.”
During a board meeting in August, Cramer also addressed the topic.
“I don’t want any of the DEI, CRT, woke left stuff being taught in any of our classes,” he said. “But I understand the difficulty of trying, from the outside, to dictate what’s being taught. And I think we do believe in academic freedom and, of course, freedom of speech. So I think addressing how things are taught is the right path.”
Cramer elaborated on his position later in the meeting.
“Why do I think the DEI, CRT stuff shouldn’t be taught is because I don’t believe it helps either minorities or nonminority students,” he said. “Minority students need to know that they’re there by merit. They deserve to be there. And some nonminority students might be left out. There might be reverse discrimination from those policies.”
Throughout his public career, Cramer has described himself as “a bridge builder,” a play on the fact that his family’s construction business specializes in bridge construction. He used the phrase again on Wednesday.
“I’m a bridge builder, and this might be a good time for a bridge builder to bring all the interested parties who want to make our universities better together,” he said.
In addition to electing Cramer as president on Wednesday, the regents also unanimously selected Kurt Tjaden, the board’s newest member, to serve as president pro tem. The Iowa Senate approved Gov. Reynolds’ appointment of Tjaden as a regent on April 29.
Tjaden replaces Greta Rouse, who announced on Monday she was stepping down as president pro tem. Unlike former president Bates, Rouse will remain on the Board of Regents. Her current term expires in 2027.
