14-03-2025
After riot police targeted protesters, IU gave Whitten a raise
In April 2024, hundreds of students protested Indiana University's support for Israel's attack on Gaza. On the first day of the protests, demonstrators were swarmed by militarized riot police wielding assault weapons, grenade launchers and shotguns while being flanked by armored vehicles, helicopters and drones flying overhead, as well as snipers on a roof with the rifle pointing down at the students.
I was among the 50 people arrested during two separate raids on the protest encampment. For reasons that are still unclear, I was given a five-year ban from campus. Shortly after my arrest, friends who were monitoring police radio chatter told me that the sniper had mentioned me specifically, singling me out as a 'main actor.'
Body cam footage from the officers on the ground shows them specifically targeting me and another student for arrest, labeling me 'Black afro guy.' Minutes after this, while attacking other protesters, police pointed at me, told me not to run, to get on the ground and then put me in zip-ties.
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Even though the Monroe County prosecutor quickly dismissed the arrests as "constitutionally dubious," and all of the bans were eventually rescinded, the administration has yet to issue any apology for its actions.
Quite the opposite: Since last summer, the board has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a law firm to produce a report to justify the administration's actions. The board has formalized its hostility to dissent by implementing a speech restriction policy that is arguably unconstitutional and currently being challenged in a lawsuit by the ACLU (in which I am one of the plaintiffs).
The board has also decided to award IU President Pamela Whitten a $200,000 salary increase and a contract extension to 2031. The money and contract extension is seemingly Whitten's reward by a body that has demonstrated that it has no interest in the academic or social mission of the university.
This would be outrageous if the assault on Dunn Meadow protesters was Whitten's only transgression, but it goes far beyond that. The attacks on student protesters came shortly after graduate workers went on a three-day strike for union recognition and a living wage in which I participated. Despite years of organizing and a four-week graduate strike in 2022, the university has refused to recognize these workers' rights to collectively bargain.
The April strike also came on the heels of a historic, university-wide vote in which over 90% of faculty voted no-confidence in Whitten alongside Provost Rahul Shrivastav and Vice Provost Carrie Docherty. Unlike many similar cases at universities in which overwhelming votes of no-confidence result in removal or resignation of the president, IU's board and president responded to faculty with a middle finger in the form of widely-mocked "listening sessions."
The vote In part this was a response to the summary suspension of professor Abdulkader Sinno for his role in assisting the Palestine Solidarity Committee book a room for a speaker. But, in part, the no-confidence vote was the culmination of tensions simmering since Whitten was selected to be president against the recommendations of faculty and with clear disregard for established processes.
After the board of trustees created a 17-member search committee made up of faculty and other stakeholders, the body came back with four final candidates. The board then rejected these candidates without explanation and instead chose Whitten. Since then, the board has refused to offer any meaningful clear that Whitten is at the university to advance an unpopular agenda of corporatization, program-cutting and union busting. Under her leadership, the university has mandated cuts to the humanities departments deemed to be unprofitable. Important centers of research have been defunded. The intensive freshman seminar, a key program that assisted me during my first year at IU, is now being cut.
The board of trustees don't seem to care. At its core, this is a reflection of the rot within the U.S. political system. The Indiana General Assembly recently passed a bill that ensures seven of the nine board seats are controlled by the governor. Given that the Republican Party is waging a war against higher ed around the country, it is unlikely that Gov. Mike Braun has any love for higher education.
How do we change a university system that displays such hostility to the needs and desires of the community it is ostensibly there to serve? The answer is, and has always been, to organize.
Bryce Greene is an organizer and doctoral student studying informatics at Indiana University. His writing has appeared in Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, Salon, Current Affairs and other publications.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU's Pamela Whitten gets $200K raise for serving GOP agenda | Opinion
