In August, Indiana University Bloomington sanctioned professor Benjamin Robinson after a student complained that Robinson had discussed in class his own experiences of being arrested and jailed during pro-Palestinian rallies.
Robinson said the examples were relevant to the lecture for his Introduction to German Thought and Culture course, which discusses philosophical concepts. Robinson, who received a letter of reprimand that will be in his permanent personnel file, is among at least two professors disciplined by Indiana’s flagship university under a two-year-old state law aimed at promoting intellectual diversity in college classrooms.
The law, SB 202, requires public institutions to have reporting systems for students and employees to lodge complaints against faculty members who don’t foster a culture of free inquiry, don’t expose students to different viewpoints, and give opinions on topics unrelated to their academic disciplines.
SB 202 also requires governing boards to review tenured faculty members every five years and take disciplinary action against them — up to termination — if they are deemed unlikely to encourage intellectual diversity and expose students to opposing viewpoints.
The measure is among dozens of laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures over the last few years that place guardrails on classroom instruction, according to PEN America, a free expression group. Critics of intellectual diversity requirements and legislation dictating curriculum measures say they impede academic freedom by making professors fearful of discussing controversial topics, thereby diminishing educational quality.
“It was clearly an overly broad law, it was a vague law, it was a law with a stated purpose … to protect conservative voices," said Robinson. “I was punished by the university administration for representing a viewpoint that they disfavor.”
But the bill's author, Indiana state Sen. Spencer Deery, a Republican, said the law holds professors accountable for fostering a free speech environment.
“We do students a disservice when we shelter them from challenging views,” said Deery. “Anybody who thinks there's adequate robust debate at our universities is kidding themselves.”
However, policies that permit discussion of some ideas and not others do not foster a free exchange of ideas and free debate, said Amy Reid, program director of PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program.The point of education is to expose students to a diverse set of ideas — something that cannot be achieved by imposing limitations on faculty speech, she said.
“What we’ve seen these past months is higher education turned into a minefield, where faculty are constantly needing to navigate what they can say, how they can talk about their work and their field,” said Reid. “They have very realistic fears that anything they say can be weaponized against them.”
Officials at Indiana University did not respond to numerous requests for comment regarding disciplinary actions taken under the law or the free speech environment on campus.
Robinson discusses his arrest
During class, Robinson, who is Jewish, said he discussed his experiences being arrested during pro-Palestinian protests — once in spring 2024 and another time at the Israeli consulate in Chicago in November 2023.
The course Robinson teaches is heavily rooted in philosophy — digging into the views of influential Germans, such as theologian Martin Luther and philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
During one lecture, he said he tried to teach philosophical material — in this case, the famed prisoner’s dilemma — in which two prisoners are placed in isolated cells and pressured to confess to a crime before the other to receive a better outcome — by tying it to his experience of being arrested. “It is complex material, and it’s a hard syllabus to teach,” said Robinson.
He said he also discussed in class his lawsuit challenging the university’s 2024 policy requiring prior approval for campus protests between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana represented Robinson, along with a local resident and university student, in the case.
The bill is designed to recognize that all of us, no matter our politics, sometimes have political or partisan blind spots.
Spencer Deery
Indiana state senator and author of SB 202
In May 2025, a federal judge blocked the university from enforcing the policy. In January 2026, the court ordered the university to remove from protesters' permanent records disciplinary action it had taken against them for violating the policy.
A student, meanwhile, filed an anonymous complaint against Robinson about his classroom discussions in fall 2024, he said.
The complaint stated that Robinson accused the university of restricting free speech and spoke about his campus protest arrest during class “several times.” It also said he spoke negatively about Israel and described the Israel-Hamas war in “untrue and unfair ways.”
When the university sanctioned Robinson, it said exploring authority and free speech were legitimate themes within the German thought course. But because he discussed his arrests and university speech policies repeatedly, he violated the boundaries outlined in SB 202 by potentially shifting classroom focus away from the course’s objectives, the university said.
Yet it's common for professors to discuss their personal experiences in class, Robinson said, adding it’s unclear when that crosses the line of the new law. He has since appealed the decision to the university's complaint review committee.
Under SB 202, Indiana University officials also removed social work lecturer Jessica Adams in September from teaching her Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice course. A student filed a complaint against her for a graphic that listed the “Make America Great Again” slogan as a form of white supremacy.
Adams has since returned to her class but is under administrative monitoring.
“While we’re glad to see that the faculty member’s back in the classroom, it is disturbing that they are back in that classroom with a babysitter,” said Anita Levy, senior program officer for the Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance at the American Association of University Professors. “It creates a chill on academic freedom of teaching.”
Robinson speculated that officials wouldn’t investigate every SB 202 complaint against political speech, just those he described as “disfavored views,” such as anti-Israel or anti-Trump administration speech.
“There is no question that this is all about viewpoints,” Robinson said. He called his sanction “an attack on a viewpoint. It's an attack on the basic principles of academic freedom and free speech.”
SB 202 sponsor Deery argued that the law codifies a professor’s ability to hold their own political views, research their own subjects, and criticize the administration without being punished for it during the tenure review process.
However, professors also need to demonstrate during post-tenure reviews that they kept their personal views outside the classroom in ways that are appropriate, and “fostered an environment where academic freedom and free speech are welcome in your learning experience,” he added.
SB 202 did provide some speech protections for faculty and students, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote in 2024 before its passage. FIRE pointed to the measure's prohibitions on the use of diversity statements in hiring, promotion, tenure, post-tenure review and admission, and its requirement for student orientation programming that outlines the importance of free expression and inquiry.
But FIRE also argued that many provisions were overly broad and vague and could be used to target minority or dissenting voices.
The fact that the law is vague is “a feature, not a bug,” said Deery, since it would not be appropriate for the government to dictate what professors can and cannot teach. Rather, it sets up parameters for universities, department heads, and faculty when administering the curriculum, he said.
Free speech troubles at Indiana University
Jim Rodenbush said he has seen firsthand how administrators at Indiana University have muzzled speech on campus.
Rodenbush was Indiana University’s director of student media and advisor for the campus’s student newspaper until October when he was fired, he claims, for refusing the university administration’s orders to censor news stories in the Indiana Daily Student. He has since sued the university, accusing it of violating his constitutional rights to free speech and due process.
Rodenbush said he also felt pressure to censor his own speech due to SB 202 while teaching journalism courses as an adjunct professor for the media school.
As SB 202 was being implemented, Rodenbush recalled one of his colleagues telling him to “keep my head down and keep quiet.”
“When you have these kinds of laws and these things are in place, you get to the point where you’re almost frozen in knowing what you can say and what you can’t say,” Rodenbush said.
Because of the law, Rodenbush said he avoided discussing media coverage of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing during one of his courses — despite it being a potential teaching example of a nationwide breaking news development.
“When you’re talking about a series of really hot-button topics, it’s hard to even guide a discussion when you’re concerned about what you might say or someone else might say,” Rodenbush said.
According to Deery, if a math professor told students during class how terrible they believe Kirk was, that could be open to complaint, investigation and use against them during tenure review. But if a media professor were engendering an intellectual classroom discussion about both the criticism and acclaim for Kirk, that would be appropriate, he said.
A troubling reputation?
For Indiana University, its enforcement of SB 202 adds to an already troubling reputation of censorship, according to Graham Piro, faculty legal defense fund fellow at FIRE.
The organization’s 2026 College Free Speech Rankings labeled Indiana University as the worst-ranked public university in the U.S. The university was ranked 255th out of 257 of all public and private institutions whose students were surveyed on free speech issues, campus policies and speech-related controversies.
Past censorship does not justify future censorship. And past viewpoint-based decision-making does not permit future viewpoint-based decision-making.
Graham Piro
Faculty legal defense fund fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Piro contended that Indiana University has cracked down on free speech several other times over the past few years. This includes the university’s response to a planned pro-Palestinian encampment on campus in spring 2024.
University administrators changed the institution’s protest policies the night before the demonstration to require pre-approval to set up structures such as tents. The policy change led to the shutdown of the protest, the arrest of dozens of demonstrators, and an Indiana State Police officer being positioned on a roof with a sniper rifle above the encampment.
“Indiana University, specifically, has been a bad actor on speech issues for a couple of years now,” Piro said. “It’s important to look at the pattern of Indiana’s bad acting and identify the situation regarding academic freedom on campus.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, warned in a May 2024 letter to state universities that they needed to protect their Jewish students from antisemitism by enforcing antidiscrimination laws. People who incite violence or commit criminal acts cannot be shielded by the First Amendment,he added.
“Protecting our Jewish students requires accountability on your part. I strongly encourage you to enforce university codes of conduct and the law when necessary to put an end to antisemitism and the promotion of terrorism on your campuses,” wrote Rokita.
Part of a national trend
Conservative lawmakers have been pushing for state legislatures to pass laws that place limitations on academic freedom and, in some cases, tenure, AAUP's Levy said. “The right wing has made it very clear: their hostility to higher education, so-called woke campuses that have apparently run amok in their thinking,” said Levy.
Deery said Indiana’s bill was intended to ask professors to pause and consider whether students would benefit from being exposed to scholars with different viewpoints.
“The bill is designed to recognize that all of us, no matter our politics, sometimes have political or partisan blind spots,” said Deery.
But the nationwide legislative push has put pressure on universities to target specific viewpoints, Piro said.
In 2025, PEN America counted 93 bills introduced in 32 states to censor higher education, it said in a January report. Of those, 21 became law in 15 states.
Since 2021, at least 23 states have enacted at least one bill or policy that censors classroom teaching at colleges — with these laws impacting more than 50% of U.S. students, the organization stated.
Some state laws against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, for instance, extend beyond closing DEI offices and setting admissions practices. They limit what faculty can teach their students, PEN America stated in a report.
Last April, Mississippi enacted a law that, according to PEN America, restricted classroom discussion that raised awareness of issues of race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation, and national origin — labeling those topics as diversity training. It also prevented professors from teaching students about concepts related to sex and gender.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the law in August while a legal challenge against it plays out.
College officials have removed faculty members from teaching or punished them for the way they have discussed world events, such as talking about Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 attack or for sharing their views on social media about Kirk’s killing, Piro said.
In January, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, argued in an issue brief that legislation was needed to break up ideological imbalances on campuses — describing a “one-sided ideological war” waged at universities by faculty leaders with politically progressive views.
Such reforms “will vastly improve the intellectual climate in academia, allowing the free expression of important ideas that need to be heard and discussed, not dismissed out of hand for political reasons,” the Manhattan Institute stated.
But authorities stepping in and banning faculty from discussing certain issues, beliefs, or viewpoints is “incredibly antithetical to what the First Amendment stands for,” Piro said. Justifying this by saying such restrictions are in response to past indoctrination of liberal viewpoints on campus creates a slippery slope, he added.
“Past censorship does not justify future censorship. And past viewpoint-based decision-making does not permit future viewpoint-based decision-making,” said Piro.
