Harry Targ
For over two years now we have seen a brutal assault on
the diversity of scholarship and education at Indiana University by a MAGA
governor and state legislature. Although less visible the same efforts to
destroy higher education are occurring at the other major Hoosier university,
Purdue.
The state legislature passed laws that require annual
reviews of professors to see that they include all perspectives in their
teaching. Even tenured faculty, tenure a long-honored commitment to protect
faculty from capricious attacks on their teaching and research, may be fired if
they do not meet the criteria of “fairness and balance,” (which presumably
would require faculty to present the pluses and minuses of Hitler’s Germany or
the Spanish Inquisition). Legislation also requires these institutions to take
complaints from students concerning their professors , often without providing
proof or identifying themselves by name.
Indiana University
In addition, Indiana University which has been known
for its multiplicity of language programs will shut them down if they do not have a
sufficient number of majors. About 40 such language programs have been
eliminated. Both universities have been encouraged to eliminate humanities
programs, interdisciplinary programs, and programs that address diversity,
equity, and identities.
Universities have shifted their resources to artificial intelligence and collaboration with the military and large pharmaceutical companies. And generally, both universities are prioritizing so-called STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Legislators and university administrators claim that the only salient measure of university success is whether college graduates get jobs. (Ironically some data suggests that many STEM college graduates are not finding jobs and employers in the corporate sector are mostly interested in hiring graduates who write well, have analytical skills, and have a sensibility about the world outside the workplace).
All of these changes are occurring while both
universities have acted in various ways to repress dissenting voices and acts
that oppose policies of the national and state governments on race, gender, and
support for US wars. At IU, for example, police with weapons were called to
campus in response to protests of US support for Israel’s genocide
against Palestinians.
Purdue University
Purdue University is a Big Ten university, a land
grant institution and one of the two large and well known public universities
in the state of Indiana (there are several public and private universities in
the state). It has been known historically for strong programs in agriculture
and engineering. To its credit and largely because of the nationwide ferment
in the 1960s the university committed itself to create vibrant programs
in other disciplines, many in the College of Liberal Arts.
Among the many programs developed over the last fifty years
included a nationally recognized graduate program in American Studies,
important programs, both undergraduate and graduate in African American and Women’s,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and
programs of excellence in research and teaching in English, History, Sociology,
Political Science, Communication, and Psychology, just to name a few. Even students who came
to study engineering, computer science, agriculture, or business appreciated
and enrolled in the many liberal arts courses mentioned above. Also every
administration and faculty from the 1960s till quite recently recognized the
inextricable connection between STEM related fields of specialization and a
broad liberal arts education.
In addition, administrators, faculty, and students recognized that the history of the nation, the state, and even the university and its community had inadequately served minorities. Higher education was supposed to be accessible to students who historically had been denied such education because of their race, ethnicity, or gender. Former Purdue President Mitch Daniels said it well in a ceremony renaming two residence halls after African American students of the 1940s who had been denied access to housing:
“Purdue University and its land grant sisters around the
country were put here more than a century ago to start lowering and
removing barriers and promote the upward mobility of free peoples and
that has been our history ever since,” Daniels said. “We’ve been too slow about
it in many ways and many times, but the progress has always been forward.
Sometimes, it takes courageous and resolved people, like
the Parker sisters, to push things further – and thank God they did.”
https://www.purdue.edu/vpsl/news/perspectives-stories/fall-2021/parker-halls-monument-to-sisters.php
It All Changed on May 30, 2025.
On this date Purdue
University announced that all DEI programs would end. Offices were closed.
Websites were taken down. Even the closure of DEI programs was announced at a
retirement party for a DEI supervisor.
In addition, It was announced that the university would no
longer be cooperating with the school newspaper, The Purdue Exponent. Although
the Exponent was a non-university corporation, the university had
provided spaces for distribution of the paper on campus and helped distribute
the paper to those locations. The university indicated also that the newspaper
should take the “Purdue” name off the logo of the newspaper.
Finally, shortly thereafter, it was announced that some 40
undergraduate and/or graduate programs with low enrollments, as defined by the
Indiana legislature, would be cancelled. While these programs existed across
the university a majority of them were in the liberal arts, including programs
addressing substantive issues involving race, gender, and class.
Among the concerns raised by members of the faculty,
students, and community have been the following:
1.The dismantling DEI programs
2.The justification for the unilateral, automatic, and
unaccountable dismissals of workers in DEI programs. This is an issue of worker
rights.
3.The lack of any input from the faculty and staff. Was the University
Senate consulted at all? AAUP calls the norm for consultation "shared
governance."
4.A seeming refusal to discuss the decisions or provide any information about them and their consequences.
5.The unilateral ending of formal ties with the Purdue
Exponent at almost the same time that the announcement about DEI was made
public.
6.And more recently the University Senate voted to censure
the Provost for a variety of reasons relating to unilateral decisions and lack
of consultation with faculty on educational matters such as the closing of the Honors
College.
In sum, most faculty, students, staff, and members of the
Greater Lafayette community and citizens of the state hope to see Purdue
University return to its historic path of building a rich, diverse, educational
experience for all
Conclusion
The state government, college administrators, and the
federal government are seeking to roll back higher education to its historic
role of training young people to serve the society as is and to socialize them
to accept the legitimacy of government policies and US institutions. (Perhaps
the most egregious of these policies is to reduce or eliminate coursework and
research that address the undersides of US history such as the experiences of
slavery and war).
Despite the press releases both universities circulate
regularly, these universities are becoming shells of their former selves. They
have embraced almost all the demands for change that have come from rightwing
politicians, selected corporations, and the military. The rich diversity of the
student body and the varieties of education that began to be developed in the
1960s and 1970s has disappeared as the curricula and university personnel
reflect more the wishes of the state legislature and political appointees to
the Boards of Trustees.
