Bylaws proposed for new University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom

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IOWA CITY — Proposed bylaws for the University of Iowa’s new Legislature-mandated Center for Intellectual Freedom require its 26-member advisory council to meet at least once a semester — plus any special meetings the chair or executive committee call.

Those meetings — at a date, time and location to be determined — must be open to the public, per Iowa open meetings laws, according to new bylaws drafted by the center’s interim director Luciano I. de Castro, a UI economics professor who during the last legislative session urged lawmakers to create a UI Center for Intellectual Freedom.

“The imbalance is very, very strong … this is a fact you cannot dispute,” de Castro told lawmakers during a Fe