There is no question Indiana University has censored the Indiana Daily Student with a shocking disregard for free expression and the principles IU supposedly holds dear. The university’s motto is “Light and Truth.”
Those responsible have taken a sledgehammer to the reputation of not just our journalism program but the entire university.
I have not spoken publicly about it because, despite my title as a professor, I remain a reporter who cares about facts and I’ve spent the past few days digging to understand.
I first set foot in the Indiana Daily Student newsroom 48 years ago as a freshman petrified I wouldn’t be able to live up to the paper’s vaunted standards.
As with so many other former staffers, the IDS defined me, challenged me and lifted me. I worked beside supernaturally talented young journalists — some of them future Pulitzer winners — and have carried the lessons they taught me ever since, through three decades of reporting at the St. Petersburg Times and a decade and a half of teaching on the IU journalism faculty.
My hair has since gone from gray to white but in my heart I still think of myself as an IDS reporter. In my classes I make no attempt to hide my loyalty and love for that newsroom and the students who work there now.
The old often stereotype the young as shallow but that is a lie. My students are smarter, braver and more disciplined than I was at their age. They give me hope for the future of democracy in this divided, broken country.
This semester’s editors in chief, Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller, are among the very best I have been lucky enough to know. At the moment they are dealing with a crisis that has shaken our journalism program more deeply than any I have witnessed in my half-century of involvement with the IDS.
As I write these words in my campus office, the two young editors and their staff are one floor below me in the IDS newsroom, fighting for the First Amendment and for an institution that does not deserve them.
The support of the public will tell them they are not alone.
Thomas French is a professor of practice at the Indiana University-Bloomington Media School.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Censoring the Indiana Daily Student contradicts IU’s core principles | Letters
Reporting by Thomas French / Indianapolis Star
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