One of my colleagues at Indiana University is Davy McDonald, chairman of the Ethnomusicology department. I have a funny story to tell about him. I need to start off with background, but you’ll see the punch line in the letter at the end.
Professor McDonald is, alas, leftwing, and he was with a group of students on Dunn Meadow on April 26 protesting Israel’s retaliation against Gaza. Dunn Meadow has since 1969 been the designated place on campus for students to go protest something if they don’t have the time or energy to get a permit to reserve a spot somewhere else. Tents are allowed, so long as they are taken down between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., though even the overnight restriction has been loosely enforced in the past 50 years, if enforced at all. And the students had set up some tents.
Around 3 p.m., quite a long time in advance of the 11 p.m. deadline, some 75 Indiana State Police showed up in combat uniforms with helmets, plexiglass shields, body armor, batons, and automatic weapons. They also brought an armored car and set up a sniper team on the roof of the student union. They had been called by President Whitten, who told them the students were illegally trespassing (she was lying).
The state police arrested Professor McDonald and hauled him off in a bus with about 30 other students and faculty to the County Jail. He was released that night, but the university issued him a no-trespassing order saying he was forbidden to step on campus— even to come to his office, or to Dunn Meadow— for one year.
At a huge special faculty meeting the week before, the faculty, by a vote of about 800 to 100, had voted No Confidence in the Vice Provost, the Provost, and the President. The four main grievances in the discussion were about process more than about disagreement with their policies. The faculty said that the three officers (a) broke university rules constantly without any concern, (b) were secretive and inaccessible, (c) talked more with their legal staff than with professors, and (d) had replaced the friendly Midwestern atmosphere of Indiana University with an impersonal corporate mindset.
Two days after Professor McDonald’s arrest, Vice Provost Carrie Docherty, who is in charge, of disciplining troublesome professors, sent him an invitation to a gathering on campus “to understand the challenges to equity and inclusion that we face,” and “to affirm our values of community.” You will note that the Administration is just as woke as the faculty— probably more so, in fact.
How would you respond if you’d just been arrested and banned from campus? I suspect the Vice Provost’s invitation was written using AI (though you can never tell with administrators), but the Professor’s response was not:
Here is Professor McDonald’s reply, sending his regrets.
I would be interested to know, given the liberal commitments of the administration, why they would change the rule the night before the event.
Has any explanation been offered?
Regardless of politics, I always enjoy good sarcasm! Irrational extremes will inevitably have to eat their own.