IU President Pamela Whitten sat in front of the state budget committee on Nov. 13 to outline a $430 million request.
She told the Indiana State Budget Committee about IU’s plans to invest in renovations and capital improvement projects across its Bloomington and regional campuses. One of its biggest asks was $154 million for infrastructure projects and building science labs on its new IU Indianapolis campus.
But her first question from lawmakers had nothing to do with these high price tags. Instead, Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, posed a different inquiry: “How can you stand up as leadership of the university against the pressure of politicians and the pressure of donors to do what is right?”
To Qaddoura, “doing what is right” meant protecting freedom of speech on campus.
The day before, Qaddoura noted to Whitten, incoming Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith threatened the Indiana Daily Student and IU in an X post over the IDS’ Nov. 7 front cover featuring a photo illustration of President-elect Donald Trump and quotes from his former political allies.
In the past year, Qaddoura said he thought state politicians and donors had been “pushing IU in making certain decisions,” specifically mentioning IU deciding to use Indiana State Police officers to arrest pro-Palestinian protesters during an encampment on IU Bloomington’s campus in April. He argued these actions took away students’ and faculty members’ ability to speak in “civil, nonviolent” ways.
Whitten responded that all decisions were made with the safety of campus as the top priority and that IU privileged free speech. However, she pushed back on the suggestion that politicians and donors are influencing the university leadership’s decisions.
“Just because you read in the paper or you see on social media that something happened as a result of something,” Whitten said, “I would not necessarily assume that to be true.”
State lawmakers’ questions about funding for IU in light of debates over free speech will likely continue. The Nov. 13 committee meeting was one of the first steps of a months-long process for the legislature to pass its state budget bill, ultimately heading to the incoming-Gov. Mike Braun’s desk for approval.
In an interview with the IDS on the day of this committee hearing, Beckwith said the state should investigate IU using “covert” methods to support the IDS using taxpayer dollars. The IDS is editorially independent and was historically financially independent from the university, now running on a deficit since 2021.
He stated IU and higher education institutions were “indoctrination centers” and, along with the IDS, were silencing conservative viewpoints — something he would aim to address in his new role come January.
IU spokesperson Mark Bode referred back to Whitten’s comments at the budget committee meeting when responding to a request for comment.
But could Beckwith influence IU’s funding over the content choices of its student newspaper? State government representatives and legal experts say there’s not a simple answer.
“Defunding” the IDS, other IU entities
Indiana’s biennial budget bill appropriates money to state agencies and other public entities, including public universities, for two fiscal years. The drafting process for each budget bill begins during even-numbered years. The State House and Senate must approve the bill — each chamber can modify by a majority vote. After both chambers approve the bill, it goes to the Governor for a signature or, in some cases, a veto, which the General Assembly can override by a majority vote in both chambers.
As Lieutenant Governor, Beckwith won’t directly have any hand in the budget process — although he does preside over the Senate during the legislative session and can cast a tie- breaking vote.
However, Matt Pierce, D-Bloomington, said Beckwith could influence “more extreme members of the General Assembly” to make amendments that would prohibit the university from funding specific programs or decrease funding.
“He would have to make an attempt to become something more than just the presiding officer and attempt to influence legislation,” Pierce said. “That would be unusual for the Lieutenant Governor to be actively participating beyond just presiding over the session days.”
He pointed to the Indiana General Assembly’s 2023 decision to approve a budget prohibiting IU from using state funds for the Kinsey Institute, an institute researching sexuality, gender and reproduction. Rep. Lorissa Sweet, R-Wabash, proposed this amendment to the state budget bill after alleging, without evidence, that the institute conducted child sex studies and harbored sexual predators.
Although this amendment passed and was ultimately included in the enacted legislation, Pierce, who voted against the amendment, pointed out the Kinsey Institute wasn’t getting any direct state taxpayer dollars in the first place. Under the state budget bill, there are generally no specific line items for different academic departments, institutes or programs.
In its presentation to the state budget committee Nov. 13, IU outlined general capital and renovation projects it wanted state funding for. It also requested funding for four line items: IU Innovates, IU Public Safety, the Indiana Geological and Water Survey and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.
“That’s the other irony — no money was really taken away from Kinsey when they said ‘you can’t use any state tax dollars to fund Kinsey’ because they weren’t getting a direct appropriation,” Pierce said. “So all it did is created a very complicated kind of bookkeeping exercise for the university where they had to go in and say, ‘Oh are we paying the electric bill?’”
Since there is no separate line item in the state budget specifically for the IDS, “the best that they can do is say none of this money being appropriated for the university may be used for the newspaper,” Pierce said.
Pierce said he would oppose any amendments to prevent money from going to the IDS.
“I don’t think that the legislature should be micromanaging the university at that level,” Pierce said. “And they certainly shouldn’t be trying to punish newspapers that might publish comments that one particular politician doesn’t like.”
However, he noted that just as the IDS is “free to print what it wants under the First Amendment,” the state legislature is “free to decide what it funds and what it doesn’t.”
First Amendment concerns
Daniel Conkle, a constitutional law and First Amendment professor at IU Maurer School of Law, said he felt that Beckwith’s X post threatened the First Amendment.
“I would regard it as, you know, clearly an attempt to persuade, if not intimidate, the editors at the IDS,” Conkle said. “I thought it was quite inappropriate.”
He said that while the state government can’t directly control content — such as by instituting criminal penalties for publishing certain content — decisions around state funding do give it more freedom to decide how it spends public money. One example of this, he said, is the government funding programs promoting environmental consciousness but not funding programs arguing for degrading the environment.
“Fund one thing but not the other,” he said. “The government has some leeway to do that in the particular setting of the IDS.”
As an IU auxiliary organization, the IDS generates its revenue through advertisements and events, like the IDS Housing Fair. The IDS pays a tax to IU to operate out of Franklin Hall, an IU property.
While not directly funded by IU, The Media School committed to allowing the IDS to operate in a deficit for three years in 2021, and the university covered the IDS’ nearly $1 million debt during the summer. The IDS is not listed as a line item in the state budget bill.
Even though the IDS does not receive direct funding from the state or university, Conkle said any legislative attempts to “defund the IDS” or prohibit the university from giving money to the paper would raise First Amendment concerns.
“Can it be shown that in fact it's because (the state legislature) agrees with Beckwith that the IDS is too ‘left-wing’ or ‘woke’ or whatever language he might want to use?” Conkle said. “In other words, you’ve got issues of motivation. Why would the legislature do this? You know, is it hostility to the IDS or the political viewpoint as it perceives it?”
In an interview with the IDS, Beckwith said conservative viewpoints are being silenced by the IDS and IU. Conkle said that there is no objective way, from a legal standpoint, to gauge if a publication is suppressing a viewpoint.
However, Conkle said the state legislature could frame an amendment to strip funding from the IDS as an attempt to “promote a range of viewpoints,” similar to the intended purpose of Senate Enrolled Act 202. The law, which went into effect this past July, increased the state legislature’s oversight of public universities and tenure. It requires the university board of trustees to have policies prohibiting faculty from receiving tenure if they are unlikely to foster “free inquiry, free expression and intellectual diversity.”
Conkle said the core of the debate — the government taking away funding for a student newspaper because of a political viewpoint — is inconsistent with the First Amendment and with “the commitment to free speech generally.”
“Part of the story here is ‘what does free speech mean?’ regardless of whether a court somewhere might say that you’ve crossed the line,” Conkle said. “In other words, that if a society is committed to free speech, it should not welcome, and in fact should be critical, of comments like those made by Micah Beckwith, in my view, regardless of whether it would lead potentially to successful litigation.”
Joseph Tomain, a senior lecturer at the Maurer School of Law, said he would interpret Beckwith’s statement as “jawboning” — when the government attempts to indirectly threaten or coerce individuals or organizations to do something when it cannot directly force this action or speech.
“That’s something all Americans should care about regardless of the issue at play,” Tomain said.
In an interview with the IDS, Tomain said Beckwith’s comments raise concerns about “government coercion of private parties.”
“Government coercion is problematic regardless of if it’s Democrat or Republican officials engaging in such conduct,” Tomain said.
From the late 1940s until 1987, the Federal Communications Commission enforced the “Fairness Doctrine,” which required radio and TV broadcast networks, but not newspapers, to present contrasting views on issues. This doctrine was instituted because lawmakers were concerned NBC, ABC and CBS — which controlled the three main broadcast networks — could set a “biased public agenda.” The FCC began rolling back its enforcement of this doctrine under the Reagan Administration. Tomain said Republicans were generally opposed to the Fairness Doctrine because they believed it interfered with editorial discretion.
He said from a legal standpoint, publications, including the IDS, have a right to cover what they want to cover and are not legally required to represent multiple viewpoints. He stated that imposing viewpoint requirements on the press is “not good democracy.”
“This isn’t about the viewpoint,” Tomain said. “This is about ensuring the government doesn’t interfere with freedom of the press.”
