Changing the Course

David McDonald sees his classroom differently now.

Since last summer, he’s stopped viewing students as collaborators, but rather as “potential police officers” of his teaching. His anxiety has multiplied, and he finds himself thinking: “If I say the wrong thing in class, I could lose my job.”

Last spring, Indiana passed Public Law 113, referred to more commonly as Senate Enrolled Act 202. It requires trustees who oversee public colleges to develop policies for disciplining professors who fail to “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity within the institution,” or subject students to political or ideological views that are outside their discipline, among other things. Faculty can be denied tenure or promotion if they fail to meet the standards, and must face a review every five years. The law also requires public colleges to set up a complaint system so that students and university employees can report faculty members for violations.

Since July, colleges have worked to comply with the new legislation. Committees were formed, policies written, and faculty handbooks updated. Presidents and provosts wrote messages to assuage faculty members’ worries and affirm that academic freedom will be protected.

McDonald says he has already faced complaints under the law. An associate professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University at Bloomington, he is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing the law violates his First and 14th Amendment rights. The suit claims four complaints were filed against him for “violating the university’s policies and SEA 202,” after he showed a short video of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrating at an encampment on campus during a faculty panel about politics and voice at a pre-semester program for freshmen.

It had been just over a month since the law took effect, and McDonald was already feeling its force.

In principle, many professors statewide join McDonald in his opposition, arguing the law chills free speech and threatens their academic freedom. In practice, some faculty are reporting small yet significant changes to their teaching, according to interviews with about a dozen instructors at different public colleges in Indiana. This has meant altered assignments, a reluctance to teach current events, and a constant awareness that a stray remark could sink a professor’s career prospects. For some professors, it has meant no changes at all — either due to their subject area or an aversion to self-censoring.

Professors say morale is low and suspicion high as colleges iron out their policies under the law. The law is still in its infancy, making it difficult for anyone to understand its full implications. Other laws may soon thrust instructors elsewhere into similar states of uncertainty. A new pair of bills in Arkansas, backed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, would pledge to root out “indoctrination” in the state’s colleges while setting up a system of annual reviews for full-time faculty involving “assessments by peers, students, and administrators.” A bill in Ohio would call on colleges to affirm that they do “not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view.”

In Indiana, the interim period of unknowns is fueling stress, said Dana Anderson, an associate professor of English at Indiana University. “We don’t know what to worry about, and so as a consequence, we’re worrying about everything.”

Spencer Deery, the Republican senator behind SEA 202, said he wrote it because of declining trust in higher education, a trend he’s seen in polls and on the campaign trail. Indiana’s college-enrollment rate lags behind the national average, and the state has struggled to boost it.

He said parents often tell him that college is a waste of money and professors indoctrinate students. The top reason why Republicans think higher education is going in the wrong direction is that professors bring their political and social views into the classroom, according to a 2018 Pew Research poll.

SEA 202, which also codifies tenure protections into law and requires campuses to report spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, is a chance for universities to “reform themselves,” Deery said. Tying promotion to support for free expression will prevent clear-cut abuses, he added, like a calculus professor spending an entire class discussing immigration rather than integrals. “That’s really where the bill has the most strength,” he said. “I do hope though that, culturally, it is helping faculty to ask themselves, ‘How do I rise above my blindspots?’”

The bill’s wording — professors must “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity,” for example — is intentionally vague, Deery said, to avoid having the Legislature mandate what must and must not be taught in college classrooms. Interpreting the language falls to each campus, and specifically, its governing board. Deery said he’s confident administrators, human-resources professionals, and department heads will know how to best evaluate complaints. (All colleges must have a reporting structure in place by April 1 and report to the state higher-education commission how many complaints they’ve received by then.)

But some professors say the ambiguity is a flaw, not a feature. Though academe is a place where “vagueness rules supreme,” said Stephanie Masta, imprecise language and accountability do not coexist well. “If it’s so interpretive that nobody understands what may or may not count, then it can easily be weaponized against folks,” said Masta, an associate professor of curriculum studies in Purdue University at West Lafayette’s College of Education.

Some professors say the law will increase boards of trustees’ power over the curriculum — an unwelcome consequence of government overreach. Deery said he is unsympathetic to that opinion. “I’m not going to take somebody’s hard-earned income, give it to an institution, and then look the other way and have no strings attached of what’s expected,” he said.

Professors worry that even if they face no direct consequences under the law, the overall effect will be to self-censor. “What these types of bills do is just create a climate of fear, self-censorship, a kind of panoptic-style anxiety that you never quite know who is watching and why and what their intentions are,” said Lindsay Weinberg, a clinical associate professor in the Honors College at Purdue University and the director of the Tech Justice Lab.

The ACLU lawsuit challenging SEA 202 could be a test of whether speech practiced by faculty while teaching is protected under the First Amendment. Indiana’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, wrote in a brief that “curricular speech” by faculty at public colleges is considered government speech unprotected by individual free-speech rights.

A federal judge dismissed the ACLU’s initial lawsuit because the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the university. The civil liberties group refiled last September as the fall semester got underway — the first semester that would put the law’s intentions and enforcement measures to the test.

McDonald decided that teaching under SEA 202 demanded new tactics.

He taught a course last semester about music’s connection to activism called “Soundtrack Revolution,” which draws on case studies from around the globe: the American civil-rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, hip-hop in anti-police violence protests, and Palestinian protest songs.

When the unit about Palestinian protest songs began, he told his students that they would not have class discussion about it, just lectures. He strictly taught his own research and did not use primary sources out of concern that students may view them as biased. He recorded all his lectures and took detailed notes during office hours with students. He was collecting evidence, just in case he needed to defend himself against another complaint. McDonald goes up for promotion review in August to become a full professor.

Steve Carr, a communication professor at Purdue University at Fort Wayne who joined McDonald as a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, also tempered his class discussion when it came to another controversial topic: the U.S. presidential election. Carr did not devote much class time to how Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris were portrayed in the news in his “Women, Men, and Media” course. The class discussed how masculinity was represented at the national conventions for both parties but Carr says there was a lot more to talk about. He felt more secure teaching about the conventions because there were two partisan perspectives. Even then he felt like he was “skating on thin ice.”

That feeling is common. Glenn Berggoetz, a lecturer who teaches composition at Purdue-Fort Wayne, said he too is treading lightly. He typically begins his writing course with an exercise that asks students, “Does Bigfoot exist?” Weeks later, he’ll ask students to ponder a weightier question: “Does God exist?”

Now, he’s decided to forgo that practice. With SEA 202 in place, Berggoetz said he’s deferred to blander topics for writing assignments and class discussion. Instead of debating a divine power, students defend their favorite film. He plays it safe.

“The way I interpret the law is that if I’m going to bring up ‘Does God exist?’ I have to approach it from 28 different perspectives if I’m going to be fair and protect my job,” he said. The risk — of a complaint or spending valuable class time presenting a myriad of views — isn’t worth it. (Deery has said that the bill does not require professors to teach a copious amount of perspectives.)

Berggoetz also remembers multiple times last semester when he stopped short of saying something because he thought to himself: “If one student finds what I’m about to say offensive, even if I’m just joking, I can lose my job.”

Denise Lynn, a professor of history and director of the gender studies and Africana studies programs at the University of Southern Indiana, made a Kahoot! quiz in which students have to identify whether a sexist quote came from the 19th, 20th, or 21st centuries. She said she removed quotes from Trump after the election: “No one told me to censor myself. It just felt like I was maybe setting myself up to have a student complain against me.”

Lynn, who noted she was not speaking on behalf of her university, was hesitant to teach with blogs and other non-peer-reviewed work. Teaching from an opinion piece, like a popular essay from The New York Times, “might be a gamble right now,” she said.

Mark Roseman, a professor of history at Indiana University, said that he was more cautious last semester about drawing parallels between modern U.S. politics and European history or the Holocaust period because the boundaries of his course’s scope were blurred lines. To Roseman, making connections to the present is key to making the past feel real, but as a scholar of modern Europe and the Holocaust, he worries that teaching about American politics may be considered teaching outside the reach of his discipline, which the law prohibits.

When professors couldn’t point to specific tweaks in course assignments or constrained class discussion, they pointed to more abstract effects. Sarah Vitale, an associate professor of philosophy at Ball State University, said that she hasn’t made any changes to her teaching but now finds herself being more careful.

The law flashed through her mind when students made comments in her class after the presidential election. And when she taught an article on climate change in her introduction to philosophy course, she felt anxious about which students may be offended and submit a complaint.“There is this environment of suspicion, and that doesn’t lead to the most comfortable, honest, or safe spaces for philosophical dialogue.”

She said she hasn’t felt this way before. What to say, and how to say it, is now a more delicate task.

Vitale is advising her colleagues to not self-censor or overcomply. She’s hesitant to give more precise instructions. “I don’t think there are any silver bullets to avoid running afoul of this law because the law is so vague that it’s really unclear what running afoul of it would look like.”

Matthew Hotham, an associate professor of religious studies at Ball State, is following that advice but said the law is on his mind in the classroom. His “World Religions” course is full of topics that could provoke dissent among students: Zionism, antisemitism, the religious right in the United States, and Hindu nationalism.

Hotham received a complaint last year related to “freedom of expression and inclusiveness” after teaching a peer-reviewed article on Anita Bryant, an American singer and Christian activist who opposed gay rights. A student reported Hotham for adding his “political viewpoints” and “personal opinions” into his teaching and class discussions. (The director of human resources later notified him that their office had closed the matter.) Still, he said he isn’t planning on making changes to how he teaches.

Even professors for whom the law has changed little say it has unmistakable significance. For some, it’s a challenge to their longstanding teaching methods and values. For others, it exposes what they say are warped perceptions of their work.

Lawmakers like Deery see campuses as deficient in viewpoint diversity, but many faculty say the opposite is true: Their classrooms and departments are rich with debate and difference of opinion. And no, they’re not indoctrinating students.

“A part of the problem with this law is what I believe is a well-orchestrated misnomer that college faculty and state universities are out to brainwash students with a line of ideology that they otherwise would never have fallen into if it weren’t for these feisty liberals,” said Kent Kauffman, an associate professor of business law at Purdue-Fort Wayne.

Lynn, the Southern Indiana history professor, sees the law as a symptom of the culture wars over higher education. “It’s a way to try to vilify professors on campus,” she said. “It’s targeting instructors because there is this cultural mythology that we are somehow brainwashing students.”

Yet campus-climate surveys consistently find that conservative students are more likely to self-censor in class. Some faculty think that’s due to peer pressure, not indoctrination from professors.

Lindsey Eberman, program director for Indiana State’s athletic training doctoral program, is waiting to see the number of complaints that SEA 202 elicits. She wonders, “Is there going to be data that suggests that maybe we don’t see ourselves in the same way that students see us?”

A spokesperson for Indiana State said the university has received zero complaints so far. The University of Southern Indiana and the Purdue campuses also have not received any complaints. Ball State is an outlier with 11 complaints, per public records requested by The Chronicle. A spokesperson for Indiana University did not respond to The Chronicle’s request before publication.

Some professors like Carl Weinberg see dishonesty from both sides — conservative students are less inclined to share their views, he said, but the law is also a guise for a stronger conservative influence on campuses. “I don’t think [state legislators] are being honest about their motives. But I also don’t think that their liberal opponents are being honest in denying that any problems exist at all,” said Weinberg, an adjunct history professor at Indiana University.

Whether the bill’s approach to promoting intellectual diversity is the right solution is another question on instructors’ minds. Anderson, the Indiana University English professor, said he’s never thought that one course should bear the responsibility of presenting a multitude of ideas. “My sense is that this class is about these ideas. And another class is about these ideas. You’re here for four years, and what you think comes out in the aggregate.” To Anderson, “Expertise is stuff that we use to help open students’ minds, not shut them.”

For Noor O’Neill, a professor of anthropology and women’s studies at Purdue-Fort Wayne, the legal mandate for intellectual diversity and the repercussions attached distract from an important aspect of her job: to train students to critically evaluate a perspective. “When this bill calls on me to do a diversity of perspectives — which I don’t know how my politicians and the people in power are going to interpret — that distracts me and gets me doing busywork when what I’m supposed to be doing is teaching my students how to be critical thinkers,” O’Neill said.

She called the bill an “amateurish effort,” saying it’s unclear in its intent and poorly written. “We feel like SEA 202 is just an introduction to what we’re going to get next,” said O’Neill, who noted she is not speaking on the behalf of her university. “We’re really concerned about what’s coming.”

Deery said it’s too early to know what’s coming. He’s not planning to introduce similar legislation this session because he wants to see how SEA 202 takes effect. “If they’re not self-reforming or if they’re overreacting or over-reforming, then we can respond. But for me, it’s too early to know that.”

He wants to see speaker series, forums, and centers dedicated to intellectual diversity, and no blatant violations — evidence, he says, that colleges prioritize viewpoint diversity “as much as they historically prioritized traditional types of diversity.” He would prefer not to create more legislation. “I’d rather have them make the corrections that we’ve given them an opportunity to make.”

Many faculty worry that Deery may take inspiration from higher-education legislation signed in Florida. Senate Bill 266, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, mandates that general-education courses cannot teach “identity politics” or “distort historical events,” among other things. Six Florida professors are now challenging the law in court.

Deery won’t rule out a similar bill. If Indiana’s colleges don’t change course, he said, “I think we probably will end up in a Florida or Texas model.”