(Radio Iowa) – University of Iowa Provost Kevin Kregel says his office will recommend closing seven programs at the Board of Regents next meeting in April. The programs include undergraduate majors in African American Studies and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, and a master’s in African American World Studies. Kregel says his office reviewed enrollment data for programs in a workforce alignment report ordered by the Board of Regents. “As we’ve gone through this process, we’ve made sure we’re looking strategically at how we are going about this, looking at the resources that are being utilized, where the workforce realignment efforts are going to be falling, and how we are going to align with student interests,” he says.

Kregel says enrollment was not the only factor considered. “For example: licensure and accreditation requirements for these programs, the program’s role in specific areas of study that are important, available faculty resources, and then recency of the program in terms of its establishment,” Kregel says. Kregel says the university also plans to close the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and African American Studies programs entirely at the end of the academic year. Kregel told the Regents Wednesday that there will still be courses and minors offered in some of the programs where there is strong student interest. Several University of Iowa alumni say they feel “profound alarm” about the university ending majors in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies as well as African American Studies. In a letter, they accuse the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the university president, Iowa’s governor and the Board of Regents of attacking intellectual and professional freedom.

Alum Cristina Ortiz helped write the letter. “A really important component of the major is, in part, just knowing that you’re not alone,” Ortiz says, “that you are part of this, not just intellectual community, but actual, real people in the community who are approaching things in the same way that you are and asking the same kinds of questions that you are.” Many alumni say closing the programs would undermine the tradition of public universities offering classes in a wide range of disciplines. Ortiz says the Regents should not eliminate the programs, especially Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies or GWSS. “How do you explain and put vocabulary to the power dynamics going on with the Epstein files, if you don’t have a theoretical grounding in GWSS,” Ortiz says. “It’s just not possible. It’s so essential to understanding our world, our life right now.”

The letter comes after a statement from the university saying it’s conducting a review of over a dozen undergraduate majors with low enrollment. Twenty-three U-I students have declared a major in GWSS. Of the other majors being reviewed, African American Studies has 11 students, and Science Studies has nine students.