Discontent was simmering on Indiana University’s flagship campus long before the first tent went up in Dunn Meadow, the vast green space beside the student union in Bloomington.
Earlier in the academic year, faculty members and graduate students voted no confidence in the university president. The cancellation of a Palestinian artist’s exhibition and the suspension of a pro-Palestinian student organization’s faculty sponsor drew backlash. Some in the Jewish community said they felt increasingly unsafe.
But it was only in the last week, as a national wave of pro-Palestinian encampments reached Indiana, that a year defined by tension erupted into crisis. What came next — the arrests, the dueling accusations of police brutality and hate speech, the blurring of calls for divestment from Israel with those seeking the removal of university leaders — was a one-campus microcosm of how thoroughly the camps had rocked American higher education, and of how uncertain the path forward had become.
“We should put all political problems aside and get rid of this administration that has failed all of us,” said Ahmad Jeddeeni, the president of Indiana’s Graduate and Professional Student Government, who said he had friends on both sides of the protests. “These guys are not able to lead in crisis,” he said of the university’s top leaders. “These guys made the crisis, actually.”
‘Difficult, disturbing and emotional’
All across the country, at colleges private and public, large and small, in conservative states and liberal ones, administrators have struggled to navigate the moral and political thickets presented by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent campaign in Gaza that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
At Indiana, a highly regarded public university that enrolls more than 40,000 students, tension had been mounting since the fall. By the time pro-Palestinian demonstrators indicated last week that they would set up an encampment, following demonstrations at Columbia University and other colleges, any good will between activists and administrators in Bloomington had already been sapped.
“Over the last several days, our campus community has faced considerable challenges and wrestled with complex questions,” the university’s president, Pamela Whitten, and provost, Rahul Shrivastav, wrote this week in an email to students and employees. “Put simply, the events of recent days have been difficult, disturbing and emotional.”
As protesters prepared last week to set up tents in Dunn Meadow, a designated “assembly ground” on the campus where temporary structures had long been allowed, although not overnight, administrators abruptly changed the policy to bar all temporary structures that did not have prior permission. When protesters went ahead and pitched tents anyway, the Indiana State Police arrived in riot gear, and along with the campus police arrested more than 30 people. Images of a police sniper observing from a nearby roof alarmed many on campus.
Two days later, with the protest continuing, police officers and state troopers returned to the meadow and made more arrests. Heather Akou, an associate professor of fashion design, said she was arrested on Saturday, charged with a misdemeanor and issued a one-year ban from campus. She denies wrongdoing and said she had appealed her campus ban to Dr. Whitten.
“I don’t see why I should be asking her for permission to be on campus,” said Dr. Akou, who for now is working remotely. “She should apologize to me and invite me back.”
Protesters described the encampment as peaceful and accused the police of escalating tensions and using unnecessary force when making arrests. The superintendent of the State Police, Doug Carter, asserted in local news interviews that protesters were using hate speech and refusing to follow university rules and police instructions. Mr. Carter declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this…
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