Earlier this year, Ben Robinson was due to speak at a law school class at the University of Chicago about Indiana’s recently passed SEA 202, a law that critics like the Indiana Conference of the American Association of University Professors had called “dangerous legislation” that constituted “a threat to free speech and teaching reality.” Weeks earlier, Robinson, a professor of Germanic studies at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington and an outspoken critic of US support for the war in Gaza, heard a case was being investigated under the law, which allows university faculty to potentially be fired through anonymous accusations of squelching “intellectual diversity.”
“In the back of my mind is, ‘Who is this SEA 202 complaint about?’” recalls Robinson. A week later, he found out: it was him.
Robinson, who is Jewish, is one of the first to be formally investigated under SEA 202, which was signed into law by Republican governor Mike Braun in March last year under blistering criticism from statewide faculty organizations and civil liberties groups. One critic charged it would create a “snitch system” that would lead professors to watch what they say lest they trigger a complaint that jeopardizes their livelihoods.
Robinson’s case suggests those critics were right all along. But it’s also part of a growing nationwide effort targeting university professors over perceived left-wing bias, an effort that has gone hand in hand with escalating attacks on free speech driven by the desire to silence critics of Israeli policy.
The central…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
