The same day the Iowa Legislature this week kept alive proposals to end faculty tenure across its public universities, nearly 30 national academic associations or societies either penned statements or signed letters urging the governor and lawmakers to reject “this latest act of political posturing.”“Recent developments in the Iowa State Legislature suggest that the state’s great history of supporting scholars and scientists is in decline,” Joy Connolly, president of The American Council of Learned Societies, wrote Thursday in a letter to Gov.