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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAfter a previous lawsuit was dismissed last month, two new challenges were filed Friday against Indiana’s recently enacted university “intellectual diversity” requirements.
Like before, the professor-led lawsuits—filed separately against Indiana and Purdue universities—allege the state policies are unconstitutionally vague and infringe upon faculty members’ free speech and academic freedom, violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana lodged the complaints on behalf of the professors. The group said it will likely move to consolidate the two cases, but that will ultimately be up to the court to decide.
“As we stated in our initial lawsuit in May, this law puts professors in an impossible situation. One of our plaintiffs has already been the subject of multiple student complaints under the new university policy, all of which were ultimately dismissed,” Stevie Pactor, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement. “Professors should never be put in the position of choosing between their careers and their academic freedom.”
Federal Judge Sarah Evans Barker, of the U.S. District Court in Indiana’s Southern District, declined to issue a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the new law in August, citing jurisdictional issues. She additionally said in her ruling that the professors’ allegations were “premature” because their universities haven’t finalized policies implementing the new law.
Now enacted, the new policies are specifically being challenged by the professors.
Legislators approved the law, Senate Enrolled Act 202, in March. It deals with public institutions for higher education and their boards of trustees: altering diversity-oriented positions and policies for tenure, contract renewals, performance reviews and more. The law also establishes new reporting and survey requirements based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.”
The bill’s supporters said conservative faculty members and students are increasingly ostracized at progressively liberal college and university settings—or at least perceive such shunning. Faculty and students, who overwhelmingly opposed the law, said it would micromanage their institutions and have a “chilling effect” on free expression.
In both lawsuits, IU and Purdue professors maintain the law’s “vague” and sweeping mandates make it “impossible” for the professors to discern what they’re required to do—or refrain from doing—to avoid being deemed to have failed to “foster” these “cultures” under the universities’ policies and the new act.
They argue, too, that their academic freedom to manage the content and pedagogies of their courses is at the core of their role as professors — a freedom they say the new mandates directly “infringe.”
The Indiana Capital Chronicle is an independent, not-for-profit news organization that covers state government, policy and elections.
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Is there a more vile organization than the ACLU?
I am assuming you are seeking replies more in the nature of immoral or unethical (as opposed to evil, like the nazis or the kkk) then yeah, I would go with the heritage foundation. I would definitely say the heritage foundation is more vile than the ACLU.
Right or wrong, people should have their day in court.
I can think of many. I don’t agree with all of ACLU’s suits, but they’ve won some major landmark cases, including Obergefell, crushing North Carolina’s voter suppression tactics, Brown v. Board of Education, and sued against the illegal internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.
So like…yeah there are plenty.
The Heritage Foundation. The NRA. The Federalist Society. Trump’s Republican Party. These four are pretty much top of mind for vile.
But I guess I can see, though not understand, how someone would think an organization dedicated to defending the Bill of Rights would be deemed vile …that’s some really radical stuff, that BIll of Rights.
ACLU shows up for this but has been silent for over a decade on campus speech codes…FIRE doing the work ACLU doesn’t.
Ironic isn’t it, that the people that want to have more “freedom” actually want to continue to quash anything they don’t agree with and instead promote their own moral and political beliefs, almost unopposed, in college and universities. Very interesting.
I agree the left has no basement. But all should be able to speak their beliefs.
Wait, wait…so you’re “pro-freedom” but also against freedom of speech and in favor of forcing academics to promote “alternative,” often false, viewpoints?
The reality is that conservatives are often wrong in their viewpoints on economics and social issues. It’s not some little club that they’re being rejected from, they’re just incorrect in their assertions and the insistence that their failed economic and social policies are just as valid as anyone else’s within academia is childish and petulant.
Academia isn’t some sort of ambiguous place, and that is why conservatives hate it so much. There isn’t a spin you can apply to conservative policy, it’s data and in-depth analysis that produces a very clear right or wrong answer that rarely works out for conservatives. So now they need the power of the State (aka Big Government) to force their questionable or disproven hypotheses into younger minds.
You’ve proven that you don’t understand the new IU rule, or the lawsuit. All in one post. Congratulations.