Indiana U. won a title and lost its soul | Will Bunch Newsletter

Does Donald Trump have to ruin everything? The answer is obviously “yes,” but this one was heartbreaking. Sunday’s OT thriller over Canada that gave U.S. men’s hockey its first gold medal since this senior citizen was a college junior was a howl of joy in what’s been a dire year for America. But then (taxpayer-)Ka$h Patel showed up to party, and soon Trump was on the phone, egging on the boys with misogynistic trash talk about their gold medal compatriots, the women’s hockey team. Now the men are invited to Trump’s State of the Union address, the women “had other plans,” and I almost wish our Canadian friends had won the game.

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Even in a state where the sports miracles, from Rudy and The Knute Rockne Story to Hoosiers, are so big they tend to make it to Hollywood, there’s never been a feel-good script quite like Indiana University — with the most losses in college football history until this season when it went 16-0 and won the national championship.

“The energy is just absolutely insane,” Katie Shin, a recent Indiana alumna, told The Athletic as thousands of fans went wild on the Bloomington campus that night, saluting Heisman Trophy quarterback Fernando Mendoza and their unsmiling genius head coach Curt Cignetti. “The whole state is just rallying around IU.”

But there’s a huge irony for anyone who’s a big fan of America’s colleges for more than just what happens on the gridiron. In the same season that Indiana was slowly climbing to the top of the football polls, the flagship public university was also ranked dead last in the nation.

For something arguably more important: Free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the national campus-speech group based here in Philadelphia, last fall ranked IU 255th on its 2026 ranking of universities over freedom of expression — the lowest rated public institution in America and only higher than the controversy-wracked private sister schools, Columbia and Barnard.

Interestingly, the FIRE low-ranking came after a slew of campus controversies in which the silenced speakers or protesters were all over the map ideologically — a canceled Jewish speaker and a shout-down of right-wing speakers, but also draconian moves against pro-Palestinian protesters, including harsh penalties for a 2024 encampment. Last month, a federal court ruled that IU’s punishments of the Gaza campers and its anti-protest policies were unconstitutional.

FIRE’s lambasting of IU’s free-speech transgressions was reported upon last Sept. 9 in the student paper, the Indiana Daily Student. The following month, school administrators ousted the faculty adviser to the IDS and told the student journalists they could no longer print the paper and that news could only be published online. The university’s insistence that this was purely an economic move was a surprise to the ex-adviser, who sued and said he was fired “after he refused to censor the students’ work.”

IU’s leaders did reverse course, but only after a wave of national bad publicity (they couldn’t censor the New York Times, it seems) and a blistering editorial from the IDS, which made clear that “telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship.”

It ought to go without saying that curbing the free exchange of ideas is antithetical to the most sacred values of American higher education. But the free-speech mess at IU is but one controversy at an iconic heartland university that has become a poster child for the moral crisis of U.S. universities, even as it celebrates football glory.

Clearly, the leadership at IU — and this includes its board of trustees with three new conservative, pro-MAGA members that GOP Gov. Mike Braun named in June under a law that also allowed him to boot three trustees elected by IU’s alumni — are eager to keep its pigskin prowess as the main thing that America knows about the university.

The school just signed its field general, Cignetti, to a contract extension that will pay him $13.2 million a year through 2033, making him one of the three highest-paid coaches in the nation. But his new deal flabbergasted a growing number of critics who note that the big raise came as IU — just days after the new conservative trustees were named — either eliminated or made deep cuts in nearly 250 academic programs such as French, art history, geography and East Asian studies.

In addition to the bracing liberal arts cuts, the Braun-allied university president, Pamela Whitten, also heavily pushed learning online, undermined faculty governance and — in line with the wishes of the Trump regime — swiftly eliminated diversity programs.

Meanwhile, Cignetti isn’t the only high-profile figure at IU to see a big raise. Also this weekend, the trustees gave Whitten a $100,000 pay hike, to an even $1 million a year — citing her willingness to work with industry.

At least 250 IU alums, joined by current faculty and students, have signed on so far to an open letter and donation freeze demanding that, instead, Whitten step down. They also want the university to restore both its diversity programs and robust free-speech protections, as well as the reinstatement of the three alumni trustee positions. But they are swimming against a red tide of conservatism that’s polluted the public college universe in Indiana.

Cross-state public rival Purdue University is reeling from a recent report in its hometown newspaper that the school, under pressure from conservative lawmakers, has informally banned the admission of international students from China and a slew of other countries. Students and faculty have complained of an unwritten “soft ban” on many overseas applicants, although Purdue has denied such a policy exists.

Meanwhile, the regional campus of IU Indianapolis caused a stir and triggered a protest when it abruptly canceled the 57-year tradition of an annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dinner — a move that was undertaken not long after the school removed campus signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and “Discrimination has no place here.”

Indiana is hardly alone. The 2025-26 academic year have been marked by similar outrages against unfettered speech and racial inclusion, especially in the most pro-Trump red states. To cite just one of many examples, the University of Texas System just adopted a new policy aimed at limiting discussion of “controversial topics” in the classroom. Isn’t that the whole point of the college experience?

The erosion of freedom at the American university has happened gradually and then suddenly, and it needs to be getting a lot more attention. That’s hard when the president is sending aircraft carriers to threaten Iran, imposing steep taxes for no reason, and generally acting and talking like the mad king that he is.

Yet nothing is more important for MAGA’s authoritarian project than what is happening at Indiana University and other college campuses right now. As I wrote in my 2022 book After the Ivory Tower Falls, higher ed is the fulcrum of America’s political divide, now more than ever.

Every tactic — murdering the humanities and the social sciences, making campuses more white, ensuring our future elites aren’t exposed to “controversial topics” while entertaining them with the beer-and-circuses (a phrase, ironically, coined by an IU English professor) of big-time football — is another step toward MAGA’s strategic goal of an American electorate that cannot think critically.

The fight for the soul of Indiana University is the fight for the soul of the United States, and it’s not what’s happening inside Memorial Stadium against Ohio State or Michigan.

“We know that IU alums are smart enough to celebrate the success of the Football Hoosiers and condemn what Pamela Whitten is doing to degrade the prestige of our degrees,” the university dissidents write in their open letter. “Please help us take a stand against the debasement of our university and restore the glory of old IU.”

Question: Update us on what is and what should be happening in Quakertown [please]. — @marco2751.bsky.social via Bluesky

Answer: Thanks for this, Marco, because if readers aren’t up to speed on what’s been happening in Quakertown, an exurb nearly an hour’s drive north of Philadelphia, then they need to learn. Quick version: A peaceful Friday walkout by Quakertown High School students protesting ICE raids turned shockingly violent, highlighted by a grown man placing a teen girl in what appeared on video to be a dangerous chokehold. It turned out this man was the Quakertown police chief and interim borough manager, Scott McElree. Adding insult to injury, five students were arrested and spent the entire weekend in jail before they could see a judge. What should be done? Quakertown can’t fire McElree quickly enough. The right to peacefully assemble and protest the government is the heart of the First Amendment and what makes America a democracy. A police chief who can’t honor the U.S. Constitution should not have a job.

Last week’s take-a-step-back-from-the-madness question about who is the greatest living American (inspired by the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson) didn’t get a large response, but brought some compelling arguments. Two men were named twice: Pope Leo XIV, the Villanova alum who’s shone as an advocate for immigrants and for peace on the world’s stage since last summer, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has never wavered in fighting for progressive values. Other suggestions included Bob Dylan, Edward Snowden, Barack Obama, and — in a show of respect for science under siege — the health experts Anthony Fauci and Peter Hotez, who, wrote Pat Eisenberg, “is trying to improve the health of Americans despite all the things the Trump administration is doing to ruin our health.”

📮 This week’s question: I’m hopefully going to be writing soon about the scourge of prediction markets like Kalshi, and more broadly, the problem of sports betting. Should these forms of gambling be banned, or at least more strictly regulated? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Betting bans” in the subject line.

Get 13 Democratic and left-leaning independent voters together in the same chat — as the New York Times did with a recent focus group, the latest in its running series — and you’d surely hear some harsh words about Donald Trump and the GOP. But ask them what they think about the Democratic Party and you might want to cover your ears.

“Spineless.” “More complacent than I thought they would be.” “Paralyzed.” “Afraid.” “Incompetent.” “I guess suffocated, or given up...” “Sold out.” I’m not leaving out the positive responses, because there weren’t any. You also won’t be surprised that these 13 Democratic or aligned voters — very diverse across racial, class and age lines — want more radical leaders who will take the party and hopefully the nation in a bold new direction. There was positive buzz for the likes of new New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett — anyone with fresh ideas and a willingness to mix it up with Trump. Said a 36-year-old independent woman from Washington State: “I still don’t agree with everything she’s doing, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a well-known name and seems to be fighting against Trump.”

I thought a lot about the Times’ focus group last week as I heard or read two veteran pundits try, at this relatively early date, to handicap the 2028 presidential race. Mark Halperin (who’s somehow still around despite this) went on POTUS radio with Michael Smerconish to defend his picks; he included ex-Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, a center-right figure who is passionately hated by any real Democrat I’ve ever spoken with, and also overrated Kamala Harris (floating on the fumes of her name ID) as well as his No. 1 pick, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at No. 2. He said he included AOC and upgraded Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker only because his “sources” told him to — because his sources understand the Democrats while the clueless Halperin does not.

Ditto Nate Silver, who has magically reappeared in the New York Times, which first made him a star in 2012. Although Silver did place AOC in second, behind Newsom, he also — much like Halperin — uprated tired conventional-wisdom candidates like Shapiro (No. 6) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (No. 4, despite being invisible recently) and grossly downrated progressive favorites like Pritzker (14) and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (18) as well as more interesting and unorthodox names like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (12) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (15). He sees Newsom as the darling of “Resistance Libs,” the Trump-hating MS Now watchers who controversially get tagged as heavily “wine moms.” Said Silver of Newsom: “They want a fighter. And Newsom plays expertly into that.”

True, but I expect Newsom’s standing among Democratic primary voters will crumble once voters learn more about his ties to Silicon Valley billionaires, or his verbal sellouts of the transgender community, or his “meh” popularity among the Californians who know him best. Readers of this newsletter were unanimous earlier this month in not wanting Shapiro to run. I’m not going to do a numerical ranking, but I would place Pritzker, who’s made all the right moves against Trump without Newsom’s train car of baggage, and AOC, who’s making all the right enemies, including the worst Beltway journalists, as my top two. I’ve covered presidential races since 1984, and I’ve learned the only thing that matters two years out is to listen to the people. The pundits know nothing right now.

It’s impossible to top this anniversary: the day I appeared in the Epstein Files. In February 2019, with the walls closing in, Epstein’s close adviser and quasi-journalist friend Michael Wolff wanted to make sure he saw my Feb. 24, 2019 column about elite male impunity that mentioned him and two billionaires in his orbit, Donald Trump and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. What did Epstein read, assuming he clicked on it? I wrote that “this isn’t really ‘a sex scandal.’ The real scandal here is the gross imbalance of power involving women who were held in a form of human bondage to serve as objects of gratification for powerful men intoxicated by their belief they can get away with anything.” Read the rest: “Robert Kraft, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and a day of reckoning for America’s billionaires.”

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