Religious, civil rights groups accuse higher ed bill of racism
By Ethan Sanweiss
On March 5, 2024
A petition opposing Indiana’s higher education bill says the bill will disproportionately harm faculty and students of color. Sixty-eight organizations in Indiana including religious, academic and civil rights groups have signed on, including several branches of the NAACP.
Senate Bill 202 allows trustees at public universities to deny or revoke tenure to professors for failing to foster “intellectual diversity” in classrooms. It also creates a process for students and staff to submit complaints about faculty to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. It has passed both chambers of the statehouse and is headed to the governor’s desk.
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The bill’s author, Sen. Spencer Deery (R-West Lafayette), said the bill would make conservative students feel more welcome on campus and its supporters characterize higher education in Indiana as an echo chamber. But the petition says it would do “serious harm to cultural diversity efforts in Indiana.”
President of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis Reverand David Greene believes that since faculty of color are more likely to teach sensitive topics like race, they’ll be more likely to be threatened by the complaint process.
“There’s already a black teacher shortage. How do you get people to do that when this is what’s in place?” he asked.
As a reverend, Greene said he’s concerned about the impact that could have on students of color.
“The teacher is the first domino,” he said. “But after the teacher falls with that domino, other dominoes are falling. They go all the way down in our community.”
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Rabbi Aaron Spiegel of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance agrees. He said he’s worried about rising anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on campus, but he feels SB 202 is overreach.
“This is not the way to counter that message,” he said. “The way to counter that message is with conversation.”
The petition’s primary author, Russ Skiba of the University Alliance for Racial Justice, sees the bill as part of a national trend to target diversity, equity and inclusion on Indiana campuses.
“I think it puts us on a slippery road that could well end up with the outcome we saw at the University of Florida just yesterday that they are firing all of their DEI staff,” he said.
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Diversity, equity and inclusion programs get several mentions in the bill.
SB 202 says that “nothing in this article may be construed…to limit or restrict faculty or prevent faculty members from teaching, researching, or writing publications about diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
However, it does require universities to submit their DEI budgets to the state. The bill also prohibits universities from requiring applicants to sign anti-discrimination statements and says that if an applicant submits any statement regarding DEI “or related topics,” the institution can’t grant admission, hiring or tenure “on the basis of viewpoints expressed in the pledge or statement.”
The group asked to meet with Gov. Eric Holcomb last Friday, and his office referred them to a legislative director.
Some organizers have individually asked the governor to veto the bill, although for those such as Leslie Etienne, executive director of the Center for Africana Studies and Culture at IUPUI, communicating their disapproval is a primary objective.
“It should be clear that there was resistance to this and there was the idea that this is not right,” Etienne said. “We don’t accept it as something that’s to protect us in the way that it’s being portrayed.”
This piece was republished Indiana Public Media.