Indiana Moves to Take Back Public Universities for the Public
This past week, Indiana University announced that, due to newly enacted legislation making all Trustees of the University subject to appointment by the Governor of Indiana, they would cancel the upcoming alumni Trustee election. I was to be a candidate in that race.
Perhaps counterintuitively, I support Governor Braun and this policy change, even though it means I won't get to run for Trustee. Hoosiers – by which I mean both Indiana taxpayers and people who care about IU – want the flagship academic institution in the State to be a place of deep learning, not shallow activism. They want it to be defined by the free exchange of ideas, not the heckler's veto. And they want it governed by responsible adults, not by the radical minority of ersatz Maoists who show up to faculty council meetings.
Once the election was canceled, it took less than a day for one of my fellow former candidates, with the help of the ACLU, to file a lawsuit against Governor Mike Braun claiming that the recent changes are disallowed under the Indiana Constitution. The lawsuit should be immediately recognizable to Indiana basketball fans as whining to the refs (which we never do, of course). There is no argument – and the lawsuit doesn't even try to make one – that the Indiana Legislature doesn't have the authority to enact this change.
This follows a drumbeat of opposition to IU President Pamela Whitten by campus progressives and radical faculty members. Last year, when students briefly tried to camp out in support of Hamas, Pres Whitten quickly moved to clarify University policies regarding public demonstrations and, when protesters broke the rules, she had the police clear the encampment. Her administration canceled an art exhibit by an antisemitic artist, suspended a faculty member for violating University rules in holding an anti-Israel event, and disregarded a faculty vote supporting graduate student worker efforts to unionize in violation of University policy. For this, the Bloomington Faculty Council passed a no confidence measure against her. The much touted no confidence vote passed with a whopping 93% of the vote. It's less impressive when you consider that only 30% of eligible faculty showed up to vote – the other 70% having better things to do than be screamed at by lunatics.
Opponents of the Trustee election change believe that President Whitten orchestrated the legislative action to help her consolidate power at IU. Even if it is true that she was a driver behind the new policy, good for her! She's able to move the necessary levers to achieve a vision for IU where students are shaped rather than coddled and where liberty is ordered rather than anarchic. That's called being an effective CEO. You want Jew-hating anarchy? Go to Columbia. You can probably get it now.
The primary accusation made by opponents of the policy change is that the Governor is attempting a partisan takeover of the Board of Trustees. That accusation is baseless and hypocritical. It's baseless because the Governor, who was sworn in in January, has no track record of trustee appointments for us to judge and because he already had the right to appoint a majority of the Board. He doesn't need to contrive a 'takeover.' It's hypocritical because the only people engaging in partisan politics are the opponents of the rule change who dislike Governor Braun and assume he's going to behave in the most cartoonishly villainous way imaginable.
A secondary accusation made by opponents of the change is that a Board of Trustees entirely appointed by a single elected official is necessarily bad for the governance of the University. A number of other well-run major public universities – including in Oregon, Colorado, and Utah, not to mention THE Ohio State University – are run by boards 100% appointed by a governor. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni supports gubernatorial appointments. This is an entirely uncontroversial policy change unless you're worried someone might make you behave like you're at a school.
Our old election system was hardly a model of democratic legitimacy. Last year, only about 2% of the 790,000 eligible alumni bothered to vote in the election for Trustee and the winner got some 3800 votes: that's about half of one percent of the total electorate. Clearly, alumni aren't clamoring for representation.
I'm rooting for President Whitten and Governor Braun. Even if it means I don't get the chance to run for Trustee.
Jonathan Greenberg is the CEO of an education advocacy non-profit who lives in Highland Park, Illinois. He is an Indiana native, a lifelong IU sports fan, and has two degrees from Indiana University.
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