A new threaded post on this topic can be found here. For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.
02/28/21 — The Iowa Board of Regents held its first full meeting of the year last Wednesday, and as a result an avalanche of reporting spilled forth. The central and pointed theme of that meeting was Professions of Free Speech, which sounds downright patriotic. As detailed in prior updates, however, that star-spangled occasion was spurred not by genuine concern for that cherished right, but by disingenuous attacks from Republican radicals in the Iowa legislature, who incidentally have to power to lay waste to the state schools. To show appropriate deference to the right-wing nuts who hold the keys to the state coffers, the institutional heads of the regent universities devoted the majority of their presentations — and the board the majority of its meeting time — to making clear that they won’t cross the militant Iowa GOP.
Because illegitimate University of Iowa president J. Bruce Harreld remains one of the board’s institutional heads, pending appointment of his successor, he was recognized at the 3:19:02 mark and dutifully stumbled through predictably banal prepared remarks. Because Harreld is also a self-aggrandizing and inveterate liar, one otherwise innocuous passage deserves a closer look. From the 3:21:39 mark of Harreld’s presentation:
What I’ve always enjoyed prior to the pandemic were the marches, the demonstrations and public dialogue that was commonplace and encouraged within our community. These demonstrations and engagements ranged from political debate to issues with no political ideology…or — um…and often included students, faculty, staff and the general public.
As reported more than five years ago by KWWL’s Kristin Rogers, on 11/03/15, here is J. Bruce Harreld expressing unconditional support for free speech on his second day in office, after months of UI protests following his corrupt appointment:
A recent Board of Regents meeting was protested following the announcement of Bruce Harreld as University President.
Many people believe Harreld is not qualified for the job and the process to hire him was flawed.
“I think we’ve gotten a little over the edge here, I mean everyone has a right to express themselves, I have no problems with that. On the other hand I just want to make sure the citizens of Iowa know that here at the University of Iowa we’re a lot more professional that that, we can do better and they should ask more from us,” Harreld said.
In 2018, J. Bruce Harreld was so thrilled with protests on campus that he not only refused to meet with the protestors, he actually made up a lie about “tampering” to avoid doing his job. Only after his own executive staff pointed out that Harreld could legally meet with the protestors did he agree to do so, and even then only in the basement of the campus Department of Public Safety, with armed officers on the premises. [ Read more ]