FIRE statement on coalition backing press freedom at Santa Fe arts school

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and three partner organizations demanded that the Institute for American Indian Arts and its new president Shelly Lowe drop all sanctions on student David McNicholas, who was punished for supposedly “bullying” IAIA administrators. The offense? Investigative journalism exposing an empty food pantry on a campus where many students live below the poverty line. Since then, McNicholas has faced over a year of retaliation from administrators. Most recently, IAIA said he couldn’t even put up posters soliciting student submissions for a new edition of his independent student magazine, since it is not a school-funded publication  — despite the fact that school policies list no such requirement. 

FIRE, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Student Press Law Center are urging Lowe to drop the sanctions on McNicholas and revise the school’s anti-bullying and posting policies to comply with the First Amendment. 

The following statement is from FIRE Strategic Campaigns Specialist William Harris.

Student journalist David McNicholas isn’t backing down after the Institute for American Indian Arts tried to silence him yet again. And now, he has four national nonprofits on his side. IAIA’s forbidding McNicholas from putting up posters seeking student submissions — ironically, for a new, free-speech-themed edition of The Young Warrior — is just the latest attack in its retribution campaign against investigative journalism that put McNicholas on probation, cost him work, and even left him homeless. 

IAIA’s brand-new president, Shelly Lowe, should know better. A former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an institution that has faced many attempts by politicians to police artistic expression over the years, she now leads a school whose attacks on press freedom and expression are straight out of the authoritarian’s playbook. 

Such hostility towards the First Amendment is especially offensive at an arts school — the last place where free expression should be under attack. Strong speech policies protect the sort of expression that drives culture forward.

Over 500 members of the public have signed on to our Take Action campaign demanding that IAIA reverse course. Lowe should heed the call.

Stand with us and tell IAIA to end this censorial saga and restore free expression to campus.

Take Action