‘Authority Over Expertise’: Scholars Spotlight Political Takeover of General Education in Alliance Webinar

In an April webinar hosted by the Alliance for Higher Education, a panel of leading scholars argued that recent legislative efforts—most notably in Iowa, Florida, and Texas—represent a fundamental breakdown of the historic relationship between state governments and public universities. The conversation, titled “Political Control of General Education on College Campuses,” explored how partisan actors are increasingly replacing academic expertise with political authority to shape what students must learn to graduate.

In other words, state legislatures are overreaching and attacking the autonomy of colleges and universities—and the curriculum allowed to be taught—in order to achieve political goals.

A recording of the webinar is available here.

From Policy Pressure to Curricular Control

Liliana M. Garces, Vice President of Research and Public Impact at the Alliance, opened the discussion by noting a shift in tactics. While early legislative attacks focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, the target has moved to the core courses nearly every student takes, or has the option to take.

“Universities only work when they are independent from political control,” Garces said. “We are seeing political actors using government power to dictate what can or cannot be required of students.”

Isaac Kamola, a professor at Trinity College and Director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, suggested these attacks are a direct reaction to the increasing diversity of the student body and the scholarship that follows.

“A more diverse university has meant more diverse forms of knowledge, different kinds of ideas, data, and worldviews,” Kamola said. “A lot of the knowledge being produced fundamentally unsettles the hierarchies and the American myths... this legislative attack is fundamentally aimed at rolling back the very meaningful gains that have been made.”

Paula Krebs, Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, argued that these attacks are specifically aimed at the humanities and social sciences because those disciplines teach the very critical thinking skills that lawmakers now find "dangerous."

“Nobody in a state legislature is upset about people taking physics classes,” Krebs said. “They are upset about students learning the core skills that the humanities teach… where students learn to challenge their own values and assumptions. That is the threat that legislatures are identifying.”

Eyes on Iowa

While Alliance President and CEO Mike Gavin has spotlighted the playbook Florida and Texas wrote to exert political authority over and censor higher education, Iowa has emerged as a new case study for legislative overreach. 

Brendan Cantwell, a professor at Michigan State University and Director of the institution’s Center for Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, detailed a trio of bills currently moving through the Iowa legislature that he described as "interlocking efforts" to strip power from faculty and campus administrators.

• House File 2487: Requires the Board of Regents to investigate and potentially eliminate general education courses that deal with "divisive concepts" or DEI by 2028.
• House File 2361: Mandates specific civics education credits, with content determined not by historians, but by the state legislature, would be required for a student to complete their undergraduate degree requirements.
• House File 2245: Establishes faculty and students as nonvoting members on presidential search committees, with all voting members being part of the institution’s board, ensuring university leadership is directly accountable to political appointees.

“The 20th-century architecture was built on the idea that the state provides oversight but keeps its hands off operations,” Cantwell explained. “We are transitioning to a regime where state governments no longer accept that universities should operate independently.”

The Facade of ‘Civics Centers’ and a ‘Ginned Up’ Crisis

In Iowa, there is a specific strategy that is beginning to emerge: the creation of state-funded "civics centers" that operate outside traditional academic departments. These centers, Kamola argued, are designed to bypass normal faculty governance and institutional oversight and often have research agendas and requirements dictated by the state legislature as opposed to by faculty and experts in the field. 

“The end goal is to fundamentally change the curriculum and fundamentally change who's teaching that curriculum,” Kamola warned. “They are creating a mechanism where political appointees hire faculty who are then tenured in a process outside the norm.”

Building on this, the panel also noted that the narrative of "campus indoctrination" is a strategic distraction from the actual problems facing the sector. Kamola was blunt in his assessment:

“There is a real crisis in higher education: it is too expensive, not enough students have access, and it is taught by people working by and large on short-term contracts for very little pay,” he said. “Instead of addressing that structural crisis, these bills say the real crisis is a ‘crazy professor’ in the classroom. That isn’t a crisis; it’s not actually happening. It is a misrepresentation of what takes place in a college classroom.”

The Path Forward: Collective Defense

The panelists concluded that individual institutions are often too vulnerable to fight these battles alone. Fear of losing state funding or "getting on the radar" of a second Trump administration has led many university presidents to opt for quiet accommodation rather than public defense.

“Universities have been averse to suing in their own defense,” Krebs noted, pointing out that in cases like the University of California’s fight for federal funding, it was the faculty unions and professional associations, not the university administration, that took the lead.

The solution, the panel argued, lies in broad-based coalitions. Krebs and Kamola urged faculty to engage with their AAUP chapters and unions, while calling on elite private institutions to stand in solidarity with their public counterparts.

“We have to recognize that the sciences are being targeted as well,” Krebs said. “Scientists have to realize they need to support the humanists, or they won't be the last ones standing. This is a time to work across sectors.”

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