Braun is exercising new power granted through a late change to the state budget which allows him to remove alumni-elected trustees. (Tyler Lake, WTIU/WFIU News)
Gov. Mike Braun on Monday removed all three IU trustees elected by alumni and replaced two of them with polarizing and well-known conservatives Jim Bopp and Sage Steele.
Bopp, an attorney, is best known for representing Citizens United in what became a Supreme Court case that eliminated limits on corporate political spending. He has also taken on pro-life, anti-LGBTQ and anti-vaccine legal cases.
He once represented a group of students who sued IU. He also sued the City of Bloomington to end an anti-discrimination ordinance protecting LGBT people.
Steele, a sportscaster, was suspended from ESPN in 2021 after comments against COVID vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama’s parentage.
The other trustee appointment was attorney Brian Eagle. Quinn Buckner was reappointed as the board's chair, despite the same law also prohibiting appointed trustees from serving more than three terms.
Brian Eagle, Sage Steele and Jim Bopp. (Eagle & Fein courtesy photo, Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons, Whitney Downard, Indiana Capital Chronicle)
IU trustees Vivian Winston and Jill Maurer Burnett received a one-sentence letter this morning from Braun saying he is removing them from the IU Board of Trustees.
Their profiles, and that of their colleague Donna Spears, have been removed from the trustees' website.
The move against Winston, a frequent critic of IU president Pamela Whitten, came less than two weeks before what would have been her final meeting as a trustee.
Braun is exercising new power granted through a late change to the state budget which allows him to remove any IU trustee at will. IU previously had alumni votes for three of the nine trustees.
IU administrators have been silent on the legislation that singles out their school, leading some to speculate that they wanted the change.
Braun said in April that the idea came from the legislature and that he expected to let the trustees finish out their terms.
Winston withheld her support for Whitten after a no-confidence vote by faculty last spring, opposed an "expressive activity policy" that was recently blocked in court on a First Amendment basis and voted against Whitten's contract extension.
Burnett was the newest trustee elected to the board and generally more sympathetic toward the president, based on her voting record. Spears occasionally dissented at trustee meetings, but spoke less publicly than Winston.
WFIU-WTIU News reached out to the governor’s office, IU Board of Trustees and IU President’s Office. None of them returned requests for comment.
It’s a critical time for the university, which is about to finalize the budget for its next financial year. The administration is considering how to eliminate up to $200 million from its budget after cuts from the state and federal government and a tuition freeze, while creating a new $75 million engineering program.
The ACLU of Indiana is currently suing Braun over the trustee law.
This story will be updated.
