What the hell is going on at Indiana University?

Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. 

That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech.

You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.

Take action now — tell Indiana University it can’t fire a free press

And to make sure the school’s odious status fully benefits from the Streisand effect, we want to explain in excruciating detail exactly how the school earned such a low ranking. 

“The president has called snipers on protestors before.” 

That’s what one IU student told FIRE when asked for our annual survey to describe a time they felt they could not express their views on campus because of how other students, faculty, or administrators would respond. Another student told us:

“When I, as a student leader and representative of my entire campus, had a sniper gun pointed at me when trying to defend a protest that was in compliance with school policies.”

Both comments refer to how IU handled the pro-Palestinian protest encampments in the spring of 2024. On the eve of the protest at Dunn Meadow — a campus green space where students set up “shantytowns” in 1986 to protest and demand divestment from apartheid South Africa — administrators held an 11th-hour meeting and enacted a more restrictive speech policy banning unauthorized structures such as tents. The next day, they called in state police. That’s when officers with sniper rifles took position on the Indiana Memorial Union roof.

The year prior, IU ranked 243 out of 251 schools in our College Free Speech Rankings and was the second-worst public university overall. This year, after the sniper incident, IU ranks 255 out of 257 schools — performing poorly in terms of openness (255), administrative support (251), self-censorship (246), and comfort expressing ideas (227). 

When asked this year whether they had ever been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their expression on campus, roughly a quarter of IU students said yes. 2% said they had been disciplined and 21% said they had been threatened with it. 

We told you IU was a bad place for free speech.

IU faculty agree. Almost three-quarters of those we surveyed last year from March 4 to May 13 said it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus, while 69% said academic freedom is “not at all” or “not very” secure on their campus.

In April 2024, faculty launched a petition calling for a vote of “no confidence” in the university’s leadership. They cited encroachments on academic freedom and shared governance, highlighting examples that raised concerns about viewpoint discrimination. These included the university’s suspension of associate professor Abdulkader Sinno from his advising role after he publicly criticized the university for denying a room reservation to the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group he advised, as well as its cancellation of an art exhibit and talk featuring Palestinian artist Samia Halaby at its campus museum. 

That no-confidence resolution passed, with 93% of the 948 faculty members in attendance voting in favor.

Those two incidents negatively impacted IU’s performance in the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, and the cancellation of Halaby’s exhibition and talk also hurt IU in this year’s rankings.

But that’s not all. This year, IU was also penalized for: 

• Postponing a campus event featuring prominent pro-Israel activist and Hamas critic Mosab Hassan Yousef after multiple student groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Middle Eastern Student Association, criticized the event and called Yousef “Islamophobic.” IU told Yousef that it was postponing the event because of “security threats involving the Muslim community and several white supremacist groups.” The event was not rescheduled.
• Failing to stop student protesters from disrupting a talk between Senator Jim Banks and Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichick by pushing and harassing attendees, chanting to disrupt the event, and accusing the speakers of supporting “genocide” and “killing children.” The discussion was halted as police removed several protesters. The event then continued without further disruption.
• Canceling the LGBTQ+ Health Care Conference after President Trump issued executive orders restricting the use of federal funds for DEI initiatives.
• Banning three students from campus for a year after they were arrested for trespassing during the aforementioned suddenly out-of-bounds pro-Palestinian encampment in Dunn Meadow.

And then, last week, the school fired its Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush and then doubled down on its censorship efforts by ordering the student newspaper Indiana Daily Student to cease its print publication because it published two stories about the school suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee and about how the school was the worst-ranked public university in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings. 

We told you Indiana University was a bad school for free speech. In fact, it’s literally one of the worst. And the public is as outraged as we are — so far, over 1,700 people have sent our Take Action email to IU President Pamela Whitten telling her she can’t censor a free press.

Congratulations Indiana, you’ve managed to outdo yourself. See you at the bottom next year.