IU students and faculty used green feathers in the 1950s to protest McCarthyism. Demonstrators drew a parallel to the current atmosphere on campus.
(Lucinda Larnach / WFIU-WTIU)
Dozens of IU students, staff and faculty attended events Tuesday wearing green feathers and carrying signs to protest what they see as a multidirectional assault on academic freedom at IU.
Organizers planned the Day of Action to “defend higher education from unprecedented attacks from University Administrators and Government.”
Organizers used symbols of a historic IU protest to draw parallels to the anti-communist Red Scare of the 1950s.
“In 1953, thousands of IU students adorned themselves with green feathers in a first mass challenge to McCarthyism,” according to a flyer distributed at the rally. “The green feather came as a response to a conservative effort to ban Robin Hood from Indiana public schools on the panicked grounds that it would install communist values.”
From right to left: Melissa Blundell Osorio, Ben Robinson and Seppo Niemi-Colvin. (Lucinda Larnach / WFIU-WTIU)
Dozens of students and faculty gathered on the steps of the Frances Morgan Swain Student Building at 11 a.m. for a teach-in: a form of protest that involves lectures and discussions much like a classroom.
Melissa Blundell Osorio, a graduate student in gender studies, asked administrators to defend the Kinsey Institute more robustly from misinformation and keep the institute and its archives at IU.
“If a legislator sees that they can be successful in getting the university to separate a department or research institute that they don't like, they will continue to do this with other departments and other fields of research,” she said.
Germanic studies professor Ben Robinson warned about the consequences of the senate tenure bill, which could lead to academics losing or being denied job security for failing to foster what the bill calls “intellectual diversity” in the classroom. He characterized the bill as an attack on democracy.
“It's telling us that we have to restrict our presentation of viewpoints, and that seems odious,” Robinson said.
Senate Bill 202 passed its third reading in the House this week. If the Senate approves of its amendments, its next destination will be Gov. Eric Holcomb’s desk. The university has spoken against the bill.
A protestor holds a sign against Senate Bill 202 at the morning teach-in. (Lucinda Larnach / WFIU-WTIU)
Seppo Niemi-Colvin, a postdoctoral fellow in math, addressed the crowd wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab garment that has come to be seen as a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
He compared the aim of SB 202 to IU’s decisions to cancel a show by a Palestinian artist over safety concerns and suspend a professor for a room reservation dispute after he sponsored a talk by a pro-Palestine activist.
“We have seen the values of the legislature, for example with respect to the Kinsey Institute, and we have also seen how the administration here applies its values on campus with respect to what speech should be allowed or not,” Niemi-Colvin said.
The rally that afternoon took place around the statue of Alfred Kinsey, the site of a large pro-Kinsey demonstration last November. Many protestors held “Keep Kinsey” signs and the crowd lapsed periodically into pro-Palestine chants.
Speakers fluctuated between urgent and lighthearted, at one point encouraging the crowd to use their green feathers to tickle away a giant foot that threatened to crush academic freedom.
Protestors tickling a giant foot, a stand-in for attacks on academic freedom. (Ethan Sandweiss / WFIU-WTIU)
Faculty and graduate students were present, but as one demonstrator noted at the teach-in, the events were meant to inform younger students about the debate over academic freedom. Undergraduate Elena Ledesma said she heard about the rally earlier that day in her Intro to Latino Studies class and as a political science student felt compelled to show her disapproval of SB 202.
“Freedom of speech is embedded in university, and this is just undermining it to the greatest degree it can,” she said.
Undergraduates Cianni Lugo (left) Elena Ledesma (right) showed up for the afternoon rally. (Devan Ridgway / WFIU-WTIU)
Russ Skiba, professor emeritus of education and counseling psychology, spoke on behalf of the University Alliance for Racial Justice, which has characterized SB 202 as part of a nationwide effort to undermine discussion of civil rights on campus.
“What's most egregious about this bill is what it targets and who it targets,” Skiba said, “professors who dare to speak about racism and discrimination in their classes.”
With decisions looming on Kinsey and SB 202, attendees worried that life at IU could soon look quite different. But Skiba said that wouldn’t be the end of his protest.
“There are a lot of people in this state that believe we need to keep moving forward, towards diversity, towards justice, towards fairness,” he said. “It's time the legislature understood that.”
