Questions of Donor Intent and Race-Based Aid

The Iowa Supreme Court’s recent ruling involving the University of Iowa and the estate of chemist Ezra Totton is about much more than a scholarship. It is about history, discrimination, and donor intent.

And it is about the increasingly complicated legal and political landscape surrounding efforts to address inequality in America.

Ezra Totton

To understand the case, one must first understand the man behind it. Ezra Totton was a Black scientist who came of age during the Jim Crow era. In 1939, he was among a group of Black students who challenged racial barriers in graduate education after being denied admission to the University of Tennessee.

He eventually earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin before building a distinguished academic career.

The Totton scholarship

When Totton died in 1997, he left money to support future generations of Black students pursuing careers in science. His instructions were not ambiguous. The scholarship was intended for Black students majoring in the physical sciences, preferably chemistry. That purpose reflected both his personal experiences and the barriers he spent a lifetime overcoming.

For years, the scholarship existed without controversy. Then, the legal landscape changed.

Key SCOTUS opinion

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race-conscious admissions programs used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision specifically addressed admissions, its effects quickly spread far beyond admissions offices.

Effect of ruling on U.S. universities

Universities across the country began reevaluating scholarships, fellowships, recruitment programs, and diversity initiatives that explicitly referenced race. The University of Iowa found itself confronting the same question faced by many institutions, whether a scholarship restricted to students of a particular race can continue to be administered under the new legal environment.

The university concluded that it could not. Or at least that continuing to do so might be unlawful or impractical

National movement

That conclusion did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflects a broader national movement that has sought to dismantle or significantly restrict race-conscious programs in education. Court decisions, political pressure, legislative action, and public debate have all contributed to an environment in which universities increasingly view such programs as legally vulnerable.

Whether one views those developments as a restoration of equal treatment or a retreat from efforts to address historical inequities depends largely on one’s perspective.

The University of Iowa responded by asking the courts for permission to modify Totton’s scholarship, replacing the requirement that recipients be Black students with a requirement that they be first-generation students.

Iowa Supreme Court draws a line

That is where the Iowa Supreme Court drew a line. The court did not simply order the university to continue administering the scholarship exactly as written. In fact, it largely agreed that the university faces a legitimate legal problem.

What the court rejected was the assumption that a scholarship created to help Black science students could simply be transformed into a scholarship for a different group without serious consideration of the donor’s intent. That distinction matters.

Key element of court’s decision

The court’s decision recognizes something that often gets lost in contemporary political debates. Donors have purposes, and those purposes matter. When individuals leave money to support veterans, rural students, aspiring musicians, cancer research, or scholarships for women in engineering, they generally expect their wishes to be respected.

The same principle applies here. The fact that Totton’s scholarship was created for Black students is not incidental to the story, it is the story.

Totton’s life experiences with discrimination shaped his decision, as did his desire to help future Black scientists. Remove those facts, and the scholarship no longer reflects the purpose for which it was created.

Challenge facing the courts

The challenge facing the courts is obvious. The law may no longer permit the scholarship to operate exactly as Totton envisioned, yet simply ignoring his wishes is difficult to justify as well.

The Iowa Supreme Court appears to have recognized that tension and instructed lower courts to find a solution that honors Totton’s intent to the greatest extent permitted by law.

That is likely the right approach. This case is not merely about race, or scholarships. It is about what happens when the values of one era collide with the legal realities of another.

A bigger question

And it raises a question that extends far beyond the University of Iowa. When society changes, how much authority should institutions have to rewrite the wishes of those who came before them?

That question deserves careful consideration, because the answer will affect far more than a single scholarship.