Indiana University Bloomington has eliminated the print edition of its student newspaper and fired its advisor after he refused to prohibit news coverage during Homecoming Weekend.
Journalists, free speech advocates and the Student Government Association condemned the decisions as more evidence that the Hoosier State’s flagship public campus has censored controversial speech amid pro-Palestinian protests in recent years.
Thousands of alumni descended on campus to watch IU’s nationally-ranked football team defeat the Michigan Wolverines in Saturday’s homecoming game.
“IU decided to fire Jim Rodenbush after he did the right thing by refusing to censor our print edition,” Andrew Miller and Mia Hilkowitz, co-editors of the Indiana Daily Student, said in a statement shared with The Washington Times.
“That was a deliberate scare tactic toward student journalists and faculty,” they said.
They said the university abolished the Daily Student’s print edition hours after firing Mr. Rodenbush for refusing to publish only information about homecoming in an issue planned for Thursday.
David Reingold, chancellor of IU Bloomington, insisted that the move arose from a 2024 plan to transition into digital publishing.
“It also aims to address longstanding financial challenges facing the IDS – including a structural deficit that the campus has subsidized to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars each year – while affirming its charter and ensuring it retains complete control of its editorial content,” Mr. Reingold said in a statement on Wednesday.
The university declined to explain Mr. Rodenbush’s firing, noting that it “does not comment on individual personnel matters.”
Indiana University has seen an explosion in free speech complaints since President Patricia Whitten took over the campus in 2021.
Critics have complained that Ms. Whitten plagiarized part of her doctoral dissertation, sanctioned a faculty member who advised pro-Palestinian student protests, and restricted pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2023.
The Student Government Association said the “worrisome” push to keep articles out of print during homecoming came after the newspaper reported last month that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked IU’s free speech environment 255th out of 257 top universities nationwide.
That placed IU ahead of only Columbia University and Barnard College as the worst schools nationwide.
Dominic Coletti, the Philadelphia free speech group’s student press program officer, said IU worked “for over a month” to stop the Indiana Daily Student from publishing anything negative in the homecoming edition before eliminating it.
“IU is impermissibly interfering with the IDS’s editorial decisions,” Mr. Coletti said Monday. “Firing Rodenbush furthers that interference.”
Reached for comment, some constitutional law scholars were split on whether students could win a lawsuit to reverse the changes.
“If a public university censored its student newspaper because it was going to print news of the school’s dismal result in FIRE’s free-speech rankings, it’s the most ironic First Amendment violation imaginable,” said Ilya Shapiro, a libertarian constitutional law expert at the Manhattan Institute.
Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, said the newspaper’s charter could leave students few legal options.
“The newspaper may see itself as independent, but it may actually be an arm of the university as a legal matter,” Mr. Blackman said.
