An Indiana University instructor who showed a graphic in class that listed the “Make America Great Again” slogan as covert white supremacy has lost her job.
Administrators suspended the instructor, Jessica Adams, in October from teaching the course, “Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice,” after Senator Jim Banks, an ally of President Trump, contacted the campus about the lecture.
In May, the university said it would not reappoint Ms. Adams, a lecturer who did not have tenure, “after a careful review” of her work. Her employment will end this month, according to a May 22 letter from Latha Ramchand, the university’s executive vice president.
The letter did not offer more detail and a spokesman declined to comment beyond saying that the university could not discuss personnel matters.
Ms. Adams was investigated under a controversial law passed in Indiana meant to further “intellectual diversity” and prevent students from being subjected to political views unrelated to the course. Professors and academic freedom groups have decried the law, saying it chills free-flowing conversations in classrooms and amounts to state-sponsored censorship.
“Universities should not bow to outside pressure to terminate faculty merely because others dislike what they teach,” Zach Greenberg, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group representing Ms. Adams, said in a statement.
A student complained in September to Mr. Banks, who then told the university that the student was uncomfortable in the graduate-level course. A message for Mr. Banks was not immediately returned. Ms. Adams said she had regularly taught the materials since joining the university’s School of Social Work in 2020.
Ms. Adams, whose research focuses on how political policy decisions influence social workers, was not immediately available. In a previous interview with The New York Times, she said that she included a discussion of racism because the topic often comes up in social work.
The graphic is a pyramid that lists several dozen statements or actions to illustrate overt forms of white supremacy, such as lynching and racial slurs, and covert forms of white supremacy, such as failing to challenge racist jokes.
The complaint from Kalea Benner, the dean of the School of Social Work, said that the graphic lists “Make America Great Again” as covert white supremacy that is “worse than police killing people of color.”
Ms. Adams said the graphic, a version of which is widely used in social work courses, does not suggest that. The Trump slogan appears higher than police killings of people of color but Ms. Adams said the items are not listed hierarchically.
In an appeal to the decision last week, Ms. Adams wrote that she found it “inexplicable” that a graduate student in a course focused on diversity and human rights would feel uncomfortable in a discussion about white supremacy and that Mr. Banks would weigh in on such a “minor matter.”
She also raised concerns about due process. Rather than directing the student to file a formal complaint, Ms. Adams wrote, Dr. Benner became the complainant herself.
“The dean thus credited a politician’s secondhand report on an I.U. classroom, referencing an anonymous student’s alleged ‘discomfort,’ and adopted it as her own internal complaint,” Ms. Adams wrote.
She added: “I.U. officials have once again yielded to political pressure to persecute faculty on ideological grounds.”
Dr. Benner did not immediately return a message.
The post Indiana Professor Who Taught Anti-White Supremacy Lesson Loses Job appeared first on New York Times.
