“We think the hiring policies need to be such where there are certainly non-discriminatory practices which relate to political philosophy, as well as to race and gender and other issues,” said Bob Anderson, chairman of the Johnson County Republican Party. He claims students are deprived of “diversity of political thought” when conservative thinkers, like Wagner, are rejected based on their politics.
Teresa Wagner, pictured above, is suing a former dean at the University of Iowa College of Law for employment discrimination after she was turned down for a faculty position. Wagner claims the law school rejected her candidacy because of her conservative political views.
Iowa Republicans are taking aim at the state’s top law school for denying a faculty position to a conservative law professor, who an assistant dean once said embraces politics the rest of the faculty “despises.”
Teresa Wagner, who works as an associate director of writing at the University of Iowa College of Law, is suing former dean Carolyn Jones for employment discrimination, claiming she was not hired for a professor position because Jones and other law faculty disapproved of her conservative views and activism.
To hold a law faculty position at the publicly funded university is viewed as a “sacred cow,” Wagner said in an interview, and “Republicans need not apply.”
The case, which goes to trial this October, has become a chief concern for Republicans in Johnson County, who on Monday passed a resolution calling on the Iowa House of Representatives’ oversight committee to investigate hiring practices involved in Wagner’s case and others like it.
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