When a Threat Becomes an Excuse to Muzzle

On November 15, the president of Indiana University at Bloomington received a letter from Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican. Banks expressed shock at “pro-terrorist protests” occurring “on numerous U.S. college campuses” and warned that IU could lose access to federal funding if administrators there tolerated any antisemitism.

Banks pointed to two demonstrations by a student group at the university, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, in the weeks following the start of the Israel-Hamas war and to claims that the president of the student government was “blatantly antisemitic.”

“As an IU graduate, allegations of antisemitism at my alma mater are personal and extremely concerning to me,” Banks said in the letter.

The next day, the administration denied permission for a talk by a former Israeli soldier critical of Israel that the Palestine Solidarity Committee had organized. A month later, the university imposed sweeping sanctions on the faculty adviser for the student group, Abdulkader Sinno, and canceled an exhibit of abstract art by Samia Halaby, a Palestinian artist and refugee.

Sinno, Halaby, and much of the campus community say the administration is censoring unpopular points of view. Hundreds of people have signed a petition to lift the sanctions on Sinno, who is barred from teaching for at least two semesters and was removed from advising roles for all student organizations for one year. And more than 15,000 people have signed another petition to reinstate Halaby’s exhibit. Several faculty members have alleged that the university violated its own due-process policies in penalizing Sinno, a political-science professor, who was punished for filling out a form incorrectly to book a room for the event. Halaby says staff at the university museum were offended by pro-Palestinian posts on her Instagram page.

University leaders say the decisions had nothing to do with beliefs; rather, each situation posed a serious security risk to the campus community. They have not explained exactly what those risks were.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, many colleges have limited where protests can happen, restricted what people are allowed to say, suspended student groups from campus, and canceled events. Often, colleges have cited safety as the sole reason an event or protest can’t take place.

In October, the University of Vermont canceled an event with Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet and journalist. The university’s Division of Safety and Compliance explained that they could not keep the campus safe due to the climate on campus and across the country in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. The same month, Syracuse University canceled a visit from Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, an associate professor at San Francisco State University and director of its Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program, saying the university could not ensure campus safety. Both universities asked the organizers of the events to reschedule.

In November, at Hunter College, which is part of the City University of New York system, administrators cited safety concerns in canceling a screening of Israelism, an award-winning documentary by two American Jews that is critical of Israel.

“In the current climate, we seek to balance our commitment to free speech and academic freedom with the danger of antisemitic and divisive rhetoric,” a Hunter College administrator said in a statement. Following a backlash from the campus community, Hunter later rescheduled the screening.

Colleges and other government agencies have for years argued in speech cases, with mixed success, that they must sacrifice free expression for safety, legal experts say. To prove that, colleges need clear evidence that allowing the expression would pose a serious risk of violence or threat of other harm to the campus community. Based on how courts have ruled in the past, an event that is simply controversial or has the potential to anger or offend someone does not meet that bar.

While colleges need to ensure the safety of the campus community, going as far as to cancel an event imposes a dangerous, undue burden on speech, says Jonathan Friedman, director of free-expression and education programs at PEN America. If an event could cause public disagreement, colleges need to adjust for that, not eliminate the situation altogether, Friedman says.

“It seems like the fear of potential contention or criticism is leading universities to model how to shy away from conversations,” he says. “When, really, as institutions of higher learning, they need to be modeling how we lean into those conversations.”

Colleges also need to be explicit about what their security concerns are, says Graham Piro, a program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Citing vague risks for controversial events paves the way for people to use any inconvenience to eliminate views they don’t like, he says.

Some recent events became confrontational and sometimes violent. In November, during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, counterprotesters began pushing against the demonstrators, ripping posters out of their hands. At the end of a demonstration expressing solidarity with Israeli hostages that month at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a student in the crowd allegedly punched a Jewish student and spit on an Israeli flag. The student was then arrested and ordered to stay off campus. At Columbia University in late January, students at a pro-Palestinian rally were sprayed with an unknown substance that some said caused headache, fatigue, and burning eyes and skin.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, lawmakers have been pressuring colleges to crack down on antisemitism, which they have defined broadly. A congressional hearing in December that led to the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University only increased that pressure.

But many at IU say its administration has gone too far, creating an environment where people may not just avoid holding a potentially controversial event but also shy away from speaking up in class. On January 26, demonstrators gathered at the university’s Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art and in front of multiple administrators’ offices to protest. They held signs with Halaby’s artwork, some reading “stop the censorship,” “do your job,” and “IU: A leader in suppressing free speech.” A group of faculty members plan to hold a teach-in on February 9 focused on academic freedom. And the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors is hosting a screening on February 17 of videos about Halaby’s artwork and life story, called “Samia Halaby Uncanceled.”

Leaders’ actions lead critics to believe that they “don’t see this as an academic institution in the same way that other people who have been here a long time see it,” says Steve Sanders, a law professor at IU. “And in even more direct challenges to faculty work or teaching or research, that they won’t be willing to go to the mats to defend those things.”

Indiana’s Bloomington campus has more than 47,000 students enrolled this academic year, a record for the university. About 10 to 12 percent of IU’s undergraduate population is Jewish, according to its Hillel chapter. A university spokesperson was unable to confirm how many students identify as Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian.

Since October 7, the university has increased police presence on campus, in particular at Jewish Greek-letter houses and the headquarters of Jewish campus organizations like Hillel and Chabad, and added new security cameras, Pamela Whitten, president of IU, said in her response to Representative Banks. Public-safety officials are also in daily contact with local, state, and national law-enforcement agencies to monitor potential threats, she said.

Between October 7 and November 30, 17 incidents of bias were reported to IU, including at least one that mentioned a protest on October 9, according to Whitten’s letter. No illegal activity was reported about either of the Palestine Solidarity Committee protests that Banks mentioned in his letter, she said.

According to IU’s student newspaper, at 8 p.m. on October 9, IU Hillel and Chabad held a gathering in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel. Hundreds of people with Israeli flags draped around their shoulders gathered at Dunn Meadow, a grassy area on campus. They held candles, listened to speakers, and said prayers for victims of the violence in the region.

Less than a half mile away, students from the Palestine Solidarity Committee organized at Sample Gates, the entrance to IU. Draped in Palestinian flags and keffiyeh scarves, the group of about a hundred demonstrators held candles, led chants, and listened to speeches in support of the Palestinian people.

Around 9:15 p.m., the two groups clashed. First, a few students with Israeli flags walked to the pro-Palestinian demonstration and shouted, “Fuck you, terrorists.” Though some pro-Israeli organizers warned others not to engage, more students followed as the pro-Palestinian demonstrators shouted “free, free Palestine” in their direction.

Campus police formed a line between the two groups as they confronted each other. For 20 minutes, some chanted while others waved their flags and screamed. There were no arrests or injuries, according to local media reports.

Over the next few weeks, tension on campus continued to build. Pro-Palestinian students painted a Palestinian flag and “Free Palestine. Educate yourself. End the Occupation” on a bridge on campus. The next morning, it was covered with stars of David and smiley faces. Members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee then repainted the bridge with more messages, such as “free us” and “stop the genocide.”

On October 30, Aaliyah Raji, IU’s student-body president, accused a Jewish student who was discussing antisemitic incidents on campus of “playing the victim” at a general assembly meeting for IU’s student government. Raji also said that antisemitism was not an issue on campus, according to an investigation by the organization.

On December 13, the treasurer and the co-director of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the student government resigned, citing concerns over antisemitism. Banks’s letter came two days later.

An IU professor for 20 years, Abdulkader Sinno focuses his work on conflicts in Afghanistan, Muslim minorities, and public attitudes toward Muslim immigration. Last year he taught a course called “Palestine and Israel” that covered conflicts in the region from the mid-19th century to today, and includes lessons on topics like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led movement that encourages people to refrain from buying Israeli products and supporting its economy.

Sinno, who describes himself as “outspoken,” is popular among many of his students and colleagues. Before December, he was the adviser for the Palestine Solidarity Committee, the Muslim Student Association, and the Middle East Student Association. But he’s clashed with the administration more than once and hasn’t refrained from speaking publicly about injustices he sees on campus.

In 2019, he attended a protest at the university’s Hillel chapter after the organization attempted to prevent parts of a presentation by J Street, a left-leaning pro-Israel advocacy group, that a student wanted to host. Later that year, Sinno argued in a panel discussion that Rabbi Sue Laikin Silberberg, director of IU Hillel, was campaigning to label him as antisemitic.

Sinno also faced flak in 2022 after he resigned as his department’s job-placement director over frustrations with its doctoral program. In an email to graduate students, he said that the program needs graduate students “to cheaply teach or assist in teaching” undergraduates, and was “perpetuating the myth” that a Ph.D. from their “modest” department would enable its graduates to land solid academic careers.

“I recognize that I am a flawed human being, in some ways a bit more than others and in some ways less,” Sinno told The Chronicle. “I can be provocative, assertive, and opinionated. I really care, and I use my voice to fight for free speech and academic freedom.”

In early November, Sinno says, his students asked him to help them organize an event with Miko Peled, a former soldier in Israel’s Special Forces who has since become a pro-Palestinian activist. Peled has argued that Israel is an apartheid state, criticized the Israel Defense Forces, and supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

On November 6, Sinno reserved a room for the November 16 event. He filled out a faculty form that he often uses to host speakers and lectures, he says. Later that day, the registrar’s office approved the reservation request, Sinno says. The registrar’s office did not respond to an email asking to confirm if the request was approved.

According to Sinno, around 9 p.m. on November 14, the day before Banks’s letter, Asaad Alsaleh, chair of the Middle Eastern languages and cultures department, called and asked him to cancel the reservation request. Since a student group was organizing the event, the room had to be booked using a student form, Alsaleh told him. The decision had come from Rahul Shrivastav, the university’s provost, and Nick Cullather, interim dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Alsaleh told Sinno.

Sinno says he complied, canceling the request and telling his students to reserve a room instead.

After receiving the cancellation notification and a call from Sinno, on November 15, Aidan Khamis, a sophomore and head of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, submitted his own request using a student form and received confirmation over the phone that the students could use the room for the event, Khamis says. A few hours later, though, Khamis received a notification from the registrar’s office that the room request had been denied. Confused, Khamis says he resubmitted the reservation request.

The next day, a few hours before Peled was set to speak, Khamis says he received an email from a staff member in the Student Involvement and Leadership Center that the form had been submitted too late. Since people outside the organization could participate in or protest the event, it required additional security measures, the staff member said, according to a screenshot of the email provided to The Chronicle. The Office of Public Safety and the IU Police Department had determined that they could not accommodate its security needs, the email said.

The students had already paid Peled and flown him to Bloomington, spending $1,100. They decided to hold the talk anyway. The Indiana Daily Student estimated that about 75 people attended. The event was peaceful and conversational, says Bryce Greene, a second-year doctoral student and co-founder of the PSC, who attended the event. Everyone listened quietly and asked questions in a civil manner. Any security staff present at the administration’s request were not apparent to the students.

“If you were not interested in Israel or Palestine or any geopolitics at all, it would have been a standard ‘some guy comes in and talks to a room full of kids, leaves’” Greene says. “There’s really nothing special.”

The administration, however, said the event posed a much higher risk.

Since Peled is a “controversial speaker,” the administration said, the students making the room-reservation request were asked to reschedule it to give staff time to provide additional security. Khamis says he doesn’t recall the administration asking the students to reschedule.

When the event went ahead anyway, Benjamin Hunter, associate vice president for public safety, said in a letter obtained by The Chronicle that he had to divert resources away from a soccer and men’s basketball game happening that night. This put the attendees of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the sporting events at risk, he said.

According to Sinno, hours before Peled was set to talk, Cullather sent a warning to him about issues with the form he’d filled out. Cullather told Sinno he’d violated ACA-33, a universitywide policy that outlines the responsibilities and possible misconduct of faculty members. Sinno had falsely indicated that the event was academic, even though students were organizing it, and that his department was sponsoring it, which Alsaleh hadn’t agreed to, Cullather said in the warning.

The next day, Hunter filed a complaint against Sinno. He cited the security risks from the event and alleged that Sinno was responsible for holding it. Sinno told The Chronicle that he attended the event but had no involvement after canceling the room reservation.

Shortly after Hunter filed his complaint, Carrie Docherty, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs, emailed Sinno, notifying him that she was going to conduct an investigation. She accused him of several actions that Sinno and the Palestine Solidarity Committee denied in interviews with The Chronicle, including that he misrepresented the security needed at the event and helped students organize it even after Alsaleh told him to cancel the reservation.

“The allegations about your conduct are egregious,” Docherty wrote, “and, if true, demonstrate your disdain for the university policy, your apathy to the written conduct warning provided to you in connection with these matters by interim Dean Cullather on November 16, 2023, and your intentionally reckless endangerment of members of the campus community.”

She also listed four other incidents involving Sinno that she said demonstrated “a pattern of other alleged and unprofessional behavior.” In 2010, Docherty said, Sinno engaged in “verbally combative conduct” with students on a racquetball court. Sinno describes it differently. He told The Chronicle he was using racquetball courts on campus when a recreation-center employee called the IU Police Department, unsure of the rules for who could use the court. Two officers began cursing at him when he explained that he had the right to use the facility, Sinno says, and they later apologized.

Docherty also mentioned the protest at Hillel as an instance where Sinno “encouraged aggressive behavior by students,” and cited incidents during which, she said, Sinno had been disingenuous with the administration or made “concerning comments” to a colleague. Sinno rebuts Docherty’s accusations and says she wouldn’t provide any additional information about the incidents.

“It is the university’s practice not to comment on individual personnel matters,” a university spokesperson said in a statement to The Chronicle. “However, in determining common sanctions, it is uniform practice for the chief academic-affairs officer to consider the facts of a given case, in addition to prior or repeat patterns of behavior or misconduct.”

In the investigation, Docherty found that Sinno did not follow the proper channels to reserve a space for the speaker event. He also failed to fulfill his role as a faculty adviser to the Palestine Solidarity Committee by not communicating properly and helping them when the university asked them to reschedule their event. He is prohibited from engaging in any teaching activities, including formal instruction as well as student advising, for the spring and summer semesters. He also has been removed as faculty adviser for all student organizations. His sanctions will be reconsidered in the fall, and he can resume advising after one year, once he’s participated in university training courses.

“I have serious concerns about the effect your behavior may have on members of the campus community,” Docherty wrote in her sanctions letter to Sinno. “These concerns are enhanced by the potential impact that your inattention to university-compliance requirements has on the students you influence in the classroom and in your role as a student-organization faculty adviser.”

Sinno rejects Docherty’s accusations and says he wasn’t given a fair chance to defend himself in front of a Faculty Misconduct Review Committee.

“I have become a litmus test of whether we have a university that respects academic freedom,” Sinno says, “or whether we’re going to be beholden to the will and fancy and desires of arbitrary administrators who prioritize donors and politicians over their own students and faculty.”

Samia Halaby, often recognized as a pioneer in abstract painting, thinks Indiana University’s administration has failed to respect academic freedom. It will not show her work, which is on permanent display at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. Many of her pieces are based on her life experiences, such as “Boston Aquarium,” which was inspired by a visit she made there with a friend.

Halaby is also an avid pro-Palestinian activist. Some of her artwork is named after events in Palestinian history, with titles like “Worldwide Intifadah” or “Our Beautiful Land of Palestine Stolen in the Night of History.” Colorful graphics dot her Instagram page between posts advertising her artwork and exhibits. They display messages like “Say Palestine. Hear the children of Gaza,” “Globalize resistance. Say Palestine,” and “Gaza equals Auschwitz.”

A little more than three years ago, a curator from the Eskenazi Museum of Art who was close with Halaby suggested she build an exhibit that spanned her 60-year career. After narrowing down a list of several museums, they settled on two at Halaby’s alma maters — Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum and the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University. Halaby, who graduated from MSU, earned a master’s degree in fine arts from IU and later taught there.

Halaby says she and her team worked tirelessly on the exhibit through late last year. They shipped artwork from Lebanon and cities across the United States to the Midwest. The National Education Association and the Terra Foundation for American Art contributed more than $90,000 in grant funding. The exhibit included more than 20 pieces on loan from several collections. They compiled and printed a hardcover catalog of Halaby’s work. The exhibit was to be unveiled in Indiana on February 10.

In December, everything came to a halt. As more Palestinian civilians died, Halaby’s Instagram posts became increasingly urgent. She heard that David A. Brenneman, director of the Eskenazi Museum, was especially upset about a post that equated Gaza with Auschwitz, Halaby says. Shocked, she says she called Brenneman’s office, hoping to thank him for displaying her exhibit and talk about his concerns.

After leaving her number with Brenneman’s secretary, Halaby says she received a call from him on December 21. Brenneman told Halaby the exhibit was canceled, she says, and that university officials and museum staff were concerned about the security of the exhibit as well as her posts on Instagram. She says she then cut in to ask that he send her all of the information in writing.

The last communication Halaby says she received was a two-sentence email from Brenneman informing her that the exhibit was canceled and that her paintings would be sent to the Broad Museum. The email, obtained by The Chronicle, did not list any reason why the exhibit was canceled.

IU will return the grant money to the foundations, a spokesperson told The Chronicle. The exhibit will still go on in June at Michigan State. The university denied a request to speak with Brenneman.

“It’s as though they threw dirt on you,” Halaby says. “But when fighting back you realize the dirt belongs to them. They are casting on you their own guilt. It’s ridiculous.”

After two unanswered letters to IU’s administration, Halaby went public about the cancellation. Madison Gordon, her grandniece, circulated a petition, that’s now gained more than 15,000 signatures, demanding the university reinstate the exhibition.

“The university community — including students, faculty, staff, and alumni as well as the wider Bloomington and Indiana region — have been deprived of an important exhibition of contemporary art and first-rate cultural experience,” the petition reads.

“In the absence of any response from the administration, it is apparent that the university is canceling the show to distance itself from the cause of Palestinian freedom,” it adds.

Halaby says the cancellation wasn’t a professional blow but a personal one. The problem, she says, is the contempt she’s felt from IU’s administration.

“It doesn’t hurt me, but it insults me.”

On January 16, a Bloomington Faculty Council meeting drew dozens of students and faculty members. The room was full, with people standing along the wall, according to IU’s student newspaper. Some carried signs calling on the administration to reinstate Sinno or bring back Halaby’s exhibit. One student held a poster that said “I am ashamed to go to IU.”

Faculty members came armed with questions for Shrivastav, the provost, and Docherty, the vice provost, who were both set to speak at the meeting. Many asked for more details on the security concerns regarding Halaby’s exhibit and the speaker event.

“There’s been, of course, contested ideas of whether there were credible threats,” one faculty member said to Shrivastav. “I just wonder, in your position, if you have yourself concerns about what it means to invoke safety without giving specifics, in light of the possibility that there may be divergent ideas about whether there was in fact credible threats.”

Since the October 9 protest, the university has been on high alert for events that may “galvanize the competing parties and become a rallying point” that puts the safety of the community at risk, Shrivastav told the audience. The administration is often in touch with state safety officials, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and several other security organizations to determine the safety of campus events, he said. Both Halaby’s exhibit and the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s event posed a particularly high risk, he said.

“From my perspective if I have to make a decision on keeping a project, a program going when there is a risk of violence or risk of other incidents,” Shrivastav said, “I would err on the side of caution.”

Asked to specify that risk, he could not — or would not — share more.