The Iowa Board of Regents passed a request to establish the Harkin Institute of Public Policy at Iowa State.

The proposal made it to the Regents’ desks one week before Wednesday’s meeting.

It is unclear why the papers weren’t delivered to the Regents until one week ago.

“I did what I was supposed to do. I sent the papers to the Board Office six weeks ago,” said ISU Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Hoffman.

Regent Craig Lang said it is “absolutely wrong to consider this institute now … if the senator was making an announcement now that he was retiring, I would change my mind.”

The institute eventually passed with a vote of 6-2. Regents Greta Johnson and Lang voted “no” and Regent Ruth Harkin abstained.

ISU President Gregory Geoffroy clarified some issues with the institute that were brought to him before the meeting.

Geoffroy said Iowa State currently has 97 institutes on campus. He said some of the institutes are named after a person, such as the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women in Politics and the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

“What occurs in these ultimately is scholarly work; scholarly education,” Geoffroy said. “In a university like this, it is imperative that whatever is done in these institutes is objective … free of things like political partisanship.”

He said a key component to the institute will be in the fact that Sen. Tom Harkin will leave his papers to Iowa State.

The papers will be housed in the university library and will be owned by the state.

“It’s really important for us to have those papers of one of our most prominent alumni,” Geoffroy said. “I think it would be a travesty if somehow those papers were embedded in Washington, D.C., and not here in Iowa.”

The institute will have a director, and Geoffroy said the university is prepare to do a national search to find an outstanding individual in the area of public policy.

“We will bring a renowned professor, a scholar, who will be granted tenure; who will be the leader of this institute,” Geoffroy said.

He said the director will guide the direction of the institute and will report do the dean of the college.

No federal, state or tuition dollars will be going directly to the center. Geoffroy said $3 to $5 million will be coming from Harkin’s friends.

“I think it is important that none of the gifts for this institute be from anonymous donors, to be up-front and clear about where the money is coming from,” he said.

Geoffroy said he would like to make certain the names of all the benefactors, as well as the amount of money they gave, will be available as one request to the public.

It is possible a graduate student will do a recitation under the director of the institute, in which case the university would provide an office and resources to the student, Geoffroy said.

“There are political aspects. That’s not an area I am an expert in,” Geoffroy said, explaining that he didn’t understand how having Harkin’s name on an institute at Iowa State would influence anyone’s vote.