Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch University of Northern Iowa student musicians participate in UNI Day at the Iowa Capitol in 2024.

The University of Northern Iowa won, for now, a big one. No, it was not a three-point shot at the buzzer by the women’s basketball team or a two-point conversion on a trick play to secure a victory by the football team. This is bigger than all of those by far.

UNI just received a $2.4 million grant to launch an effort to enhance the teaching of the humanities. Humanities, you say? But our current political leadership, both state and federal, believes the focus of our universities should be only on a job-ready education. Going even further, higher education should be accomplished in three years, not four. There is no time nor need to instruct in the humanities, matters like history, magic, art, and even poetry.

Colleges are no longer places to get an education and, more importantly, to learn to think. Thinking for us now can be done by our governments, if properly and conservatively controlled. Even here at home, Iowa’s Legislature has been working on micromanaging school course standards, particularly in history and social studies (see House File 2286); and House File 2324 prohibiting school libraries from forming any type of relationship with the local town libraries.

Maybe one of the saddest parts of this is that our public universities have gone along with these mandates because to raise objections would result in funding reductions or elimination, and even tenure has been threatened.

The nation’s public schools, from kindergarten to grad school, all have features of public funding. Thus, without objection, politicians are placing their education agendas upon us, with guardrails dictating what we can learn and what we are asked to believe. For example, students easily could form the impression Black Africans came to our country as free volunteer labor and were treated fairly. Or that only white, male Christian soldiers won World War II.

Yes, these developments in education roll over the American society and embrace us without resistance. STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and math) might tell us what we are, but it is the humanities (literature, music, art) that tell us, and others, who we are and what is in our souls.

I notice, with considerable disappointment, that the tech side of the colleges are almost entirely silent on this development. Maybe it is the favorite son syndrome: When the gods are favoring you, it is clear you are the chosen son or daughter. Maybe our science and math teachers think a slight sacrifice yields entry into the promised land of academic existence. All that is required is silence, which must be the reasoning of administrators, staff, and professors while we watch the academic world be reduced by half.

I think, however, to the contrary. Are we richer if we don’t know who Plato was, or fail to read the poems of the Roman poet Virgil? While we may still listen to Beethoven, can we understand the meaning of the music? Who will chronicle our time like Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Irving enlightened us about theirs? Where is Betsy Ross to sew our flag?

It really is time for the academic community, the humanities side, to sharpen their pencils, freshen their paint brushes, and tighten the strings on their violin. They can even ask their tech colleges to come out of Plato’s cave and join the fray.

Don’t tell me that people refuse to march to music, fail to read signs and banners, understand what writers write, and feel the poet’s lines. I am reminded so much of England during World War II, alone and surrounded, facing Hitler’s wrath with a song written and sung that inspired a nation. It served as the emotional underpinning of their survival and hope for a future. It was called “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover.”

“There’ll be bluebirds over

The White Cliffs of Dover

Tomorrow

Just you wait and see …

There will be love and laughter

And peace ever after

Tomorrow

When the world is free. …”

This happens only when we realize that the simple little step by the University of Northern Iowa, promoting teaching of culture, contrary to the goals of the Project 2025 crowd, was an act of courage and a statement of who we in Iowa really are. For us, UNI just won one.

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Dave Nagle, of Cedar Falls, is a former Iowa

Democratic Party state chairman and three-term

U.S. congressman from Iowa.