When I was in high school, I served as editor and associate editor of our newspaper, The Acadia. We were a small but mighty team, but we believed deeply in the power of student journalism. We worked late into the night, debated headlines, and cared about every word we printed. We took on both sides of tough issues in the 1990s like gay marriage. Our efforts were rewarded when The Acadia won a Midwest journalism award, a plaque I still have proudly displayed today. The paper doesn’t exist anymore, but recently my daughter found old, yellowed issues tucked away in storage. Holding those fragile pages reminded me what a school paper means: it’s not just ink on newsprint, it’s a declaration of belonging and voice.

That is why what has unfolded at Indiana University under President Pamela Whitten has struck such a nerve with me. In just a few short years, Whitten’s administration has managed to alienate the very communities a university should serve—its students, its faculty, and the public. From shuttering a historic student newspaper to militarizing responses to peaceful protests, IU’s leadership has displayed a chilling disregard for shared governance, free expression, and the university’s moral responsibility to nurture critical thought.

The Silencing of Student Journalism

The collapse of the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition is more than a financial footnote; it is a moral failure of leadership that lays bare the ethical void at the heart of President Pamela Whitten’s administration. In October 2025, IU abruptly fired its respected student media director, Jim Rodenbush, after he refused to censor the student newspaper’s homecoming edition. Administrators had ordered him to remove regular news content from the paper, insisting that it only include themed material about campus festivities. When Rodenbush refused to compromise journalistic integrity, he was terminated—a decision that exposed how deeply the administration fears independent student voices. Within hours, IU announced that it would permanently end all print editions of the Indiana Daily Student after 155 years of continuous publication, transforming what had been a proud legacy of free expression into an act of bureaucratic retaliation. The timing was no coincidence; it was a coordinated silencing. By linking the firing to the paper’s closure, Whitten’s administration revealed a chilling pattern of control—one that values obedience over integrity and compliance over community. The move was not about budgets or modernization; it was about domination, a deliberate attempt to stamp out dissent and send a message to every student journalist on campus that truth would be tolerated only when it served those in power.

The university claimed this decision was part of a cost-saving “Action Plan for Student Media,” but the timing and context revealed a more troubling reality. The firing of an adviser for protecting press freedom is not a budgetary adjustment, it is censorship in administrative clothing. IU’s own statements about maintaining “a vibrant and independent media ecosystem” rang hollow as the presses went silent and the newsroom reeled.

In an extraordinary act of solidarity, student journalists at Purdue University responded with courage that put IU’s administration to shame. Reporters and editors from The Exponent, Purdue’s independent paper, printed and delivered 3,000 copies of a special issue to IU’s campus. Its front page blazed with the headline “WE STUDENT JOURNALISTS MUST STAND TOGETHER,” accompanied by an image of four interlocking hands of different colors. Inside were editorials, essays, and donation links for both newsrooms. As Exponent publisher Kyle Charters told Inside Higher Ed, “While we’re pretty significant rivals—and while I might not be rooting for their football team tomorrow—we do have something in common, and we’re happy to have that camaraderie.” This act of defiance underscored what IU’s leadership had lost sight of: a university should amplify student voices, not muzzle them.

Even more damning was the response from IU alumni themselves. Annie Aguiar, a former IDS editor-in-chief, wrote that the university had long been tightening its grip on student publications, reducing print frequency and consolidating editorial oversight under administrators. She noted that during her senior year, IU claimed to “want the best” for the paper, but “the best, as it turned out, meant control.” Her essay in Poynter concluded with words that every member of IU’s leadership should have to read aloud: “This situation makes me ashamed to be a graduate of the IU Media School. But I’ll never be ashamed to be a graduate of the Indiana Daily Student.”

Under Whitten, Indiana University has become an institution that celebrates its Pulitzer-winning alumni while actively dismantling the conditions that once allowed those journalists to flourish. The president’s actions reveal not innovation but indifference, a preference for narrative control over educational community, and bureaucracy over belonging.

The Escalation of Protest

The same authoritarian instincts that silenced the student press later defined Whitten and IU’s disastrous handling of the April 2024 Gaza protests. What began as peaceful student demonstrations in Dunn Meadow, long recognized as a free-speech zone on campus, turned into a national embarrassment for the Hoosiers.

In an apparent attempt to preempt controversy, Whitten’s administration abruptly issued a new rule requiring prior approval for any protests in Dunn Meadow. The decision, made days before demonstrations were scheduled to begin, blindsided students and faculty. It was a bureaucratic maneuver that functioned as a gag order. Protestors saw it for what it was: a thinly veiled effort to suppress activism under the guise of order.

Students set up an encampment in defiance of the rule, calling attention to both the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the university’s own investments tied to defense and surveillance industries. Rather than opening dialogue, the administration opted for confrontation. The Indiana State Police were summoned to forcibly clear the protestors, a drastic escalation that made national headlines.

The most shocking revelation came when it was confirmed that state police officers with sniper capabilities had been positioned on rooftops overlooking Dunn Meadow. The idea that state law enforcement with precision rifles were monitoring a peaceful student protest is almost beyond comprehension. It sent a chilling message: dissent would be met not with discourse but with domination.

This was not leadership by Whitten, it was a failure of humanity and judgment. Universities are meant to be laboratories for civic engagement, not staging grounds for state surveillance. The decision to militarize the response revealed the same mindset that killed the student newspaper: control above community, enforcement above empathy. Whitten’s team defended their actions as “precautionary,” but no precaution justifies turning a campus quad into a tactical kill zone.

Leadership Without Community

These two crises, the closure of the Indiana Daily Student and the violent handling of the Dunn Meadow protests, are not isolated missteps. They are the predictable outcomes of a leadership philosophy pervading higher education that views students as risks to be managed rather than partners in learning.

Pamela Whitten came to IU with an untraditional background, outside the usual academic leadership pipeline. That alone is not disqualifying, but the consequences of her approach are now undeniable. Her presidency has been marked by detachment from the campus community and a failure to engage with faculty, students, and alumni in meaningful dialogue. Decision-making under her tenure has been characterized by secrecy, rigidity, and a preoccupation with control rather than collaboration.

Universities do not thrive through hierarchy; they thrive through trust. Whitten has systematically eroded that trust. The firing of a journalism adviser for refusing censorship. The silencing of a century-old student newspaper. The calling of state troopers and snipers on student protestors. Each decision reflects a leader more comfortable wielding authority than earning respect.

From a conflict intelligence perspective, effective leadership requires context awareness, flexibility, and empathy. Whitten’s administration demonstrated none of these in my view. Her rigid enforcement policies have inflamed tension and deepened polarization. The media has reported that her disregard for community engagement alienated faculty allies who might have helped mediate conflict. Her administrations apparent obsession with optics created crises where dialogue could have created solutions. Leadership is not about maintaining control in moments of unrest, it is about building the trust that prevents unrest from becoming crisis. This latest episode with the newspaper is evidence that Indiana University has lost that trust under Whitten’s watch.

The Cost of Control

When a university silences its students, it silences its own soul. The Indiana Daily Student should have been protected as a living classroom for democracy; instead, it was gutted for convenience. Dunn Meadow should have been a space for civic expression; instead, it became a stage for state force. These are not coincidences. They are the natural outcomes of leadership that prioritizes power over community, compliance over conscience.

The lessons here reach far beyond Bloomington. When K-12 and higher education instiutiotns start policing truth instead of nurturing it, they cease to be educational. They become bureaucracies of fear. Indiana University, once proud of its liberal arts heritage and journalistic excellence, now stands as a warning of what happens when the pursuit of control replaces the pursuit of understanding.

Pamela Whitten’s presidency has not only failed to embody the values of shared governance and student-centered learning—it has actively undermined them. Her decisions have alienated those who once believed in the university’s mission. And while she may continue to speak of “innovation” and “strategic realignment,” the evidence of her team’s leadership tells another story: one of censorship, suppression, and separation.

The day Purdue’s student journalists drove two hours to deliver newspapers to IU’s campus was the day the contrast became clear. One university lifted student voices. The other tried to silence them. And in that difference lies the truth about what leadership really means—and how Indiana University has lost its way.

Students and faculty would be wise to steer clear of Indiana University. Its leadership has turned what should be a community of inquiry into a climate of fear and control. Needless to say, my daughter will not be applying there. History will not remember President Whitten for innovation or courage. It will remember her for mistaking control for leadership, domination for direction, and fear for governance.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is an award-winning civil rights leader, scholar, and public intellectual whose two-decade career in higher education includes serving as Provost at Western Michigan University and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. A national voice on education policy, leadership, and social justice, his research and commentary have been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, USA Today, and Education Week. He has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, NPR, Fox, ABC, CBS, Univision, Democracy Now!, and Al Jazeera. Across his Without Fear or Favor newsletter and LinkedIn posts, Vasquez Heilig’s work reached more than 1.5 million readers in 2025. Since 2012, he has also blogged at Cloaking Inequity.