About 30 Indiana University professors said they want President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav and Board of Trustees Chair Quinn Buckner to "stand firmly for freedom of speech."
(Devan Ridgway, WTIU)
More than 30 Jewish Indiana University professors are demanding that leadership protect free speech, after the Department of Education’s announced investigations into antisemitism.
IU and 59 other universities were warned March 11 by President Donald Trump’s administration to protect Jewish students or face consequences, including the loss of federal funding.
The group of professors delivered the letter Monday to President Pamela Whitten, Provost Rahul Shrivastav and Board of Trustees Chair Quinn Buckner. As Jewish faculty, they wrote they have all been “Jewish students on campus somewhere.” The professors urged the leaders not to invoke their names or Jewish students’ names as justification for limiting free speech at IU.
“These are fraught times for universities and other American institutions asserting their commitments to the protection of the First Amendment,” the letter said. “Still, we recall the words of Hillel: “If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I?’”
Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy professor of political science, signed the letter. Isaac said the group opposes antisemitism, and he’s been involved in activism against antisemitism.
Isaac said existing laws and the university’s regulations and policies already protect Jewish people from antisemitism. He’s never felt afraid on campus, and his students haven’t said they’re afraid either.
“I don't mean to question every person who says they're afraid,” Isaac said. “We need to listen to them. But that's different than saying we need to shut down anything that disturbs them, and that's what's going on in this country now.”
“The mistakes of the past don't need to be repeated,” Isaac said.
But even without those decisions from leadership, Isaac said the Trump administration has spread fear and intimidation. He said the Jewish professors are worried the intimidation of Columbia University could be repeated at IU.
Federal immigration agents arrested activist Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil March 8. The Trump administration intends to deport him, with the president calling support of Palestine “antisemitic and aligned with Hamas terrorism,” NPR reported.
“It’s very disturbing to us that it's being justified as a way of defending Jewish people, defending us,” Isaac said.
Almost 3,000 Jewish professors, staff members, and students from U.S. universities signed a letter denouncing ”anyone who invokes our name – and cynical claims of antisemitism – to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities.” Fourteen IU professors signed that letter.
To Isaac, harsh criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, and it’s dangerous to conflate the two ideas. Being offended by protests is different from being harmed, he said.
“We're very concerned about academic freedom and freedom of expression in our community, and we don't want to see the kinds of things that have happened at Columbia,” Isaac said.
University spokespeople did not respond to WFIU/WTIU’s request for comment.
IU Bloomington has one open investigation by federal officials related to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for national origin and religious discrimination.
