By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
July 24, 2026
Just as Marie Antoinette’s alleged quip about cake inflamed her French subjects, an Indiana University part-time professor’s stunt with a bakery treat has ignited calls for her to be fired and highlighted the pressure academics are under in the Hoosier State.
Elizabeth Booker Houston, an adjunct professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, created a stir when she posted a video of herself on Instagram delivering a sheet cake to the late U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s office on Capitol Hill. In the video, she said South Carolina Republican was in hell, he had gone home to “Daddy Satan,” and she would not be praying for his salvation.
Also, Houston posted a picture on her X account of the cake, decorated with the word, “Congratudolences,” and included the message to Graham’s sister Darline Graham, who is filling his seat in the U.S. Senate, that “Your brother is burning in hell, and now, you’re working for the devil.”
The online response to Houston’s social-media post brought a mix of outrage and praise, with several saying her callous treatment of the deceased was shameful, while others countered with laughing emojis and criticism of Graham’s politics.
Some lawmakers from Indiana joined the chorus of those demanding Houston’s employment be terminated. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith responded on his personal X account that if IU did not fire Houston immediately, the Indiana General Assembly should withhold state funding to the school. “This is why public education is failing and not well respected by anymore,” Beckwith wrote.
Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Steve Sanders entered the social-media conversation with a two-part post. In the first, he described Houston as “an idiot & the example of the worst toxic ‘influencers.’” In the second, he pointed to the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and said her actions do not affect her competence to teach the food and drug law class to McKinney students.
Speaking to The Indiana Citizen, Sanders said Houston likely could not be fired because her delivery of a cake would be considered speech which is protected by the First Amendment.
“I would not want to associate with a person who would behave this way,” Sanders said. “But the legal question is if she had an already established relationship of some kind with the university, can the university retaliate against her for exercising her free expression rights? I’m pretty sure there, the answer is no.”
Houston did not learn of the controversy rising in Indiana over her video until a reporter called asking for a comment. She is perplexed that the three-minute clip of her delivering a cake is causing such a backlash in the Hoosier State.
“This is so silly,” Houston said.
As a full-time political content creator, mostly promoting liberal Democratic policies and politicians, Houston has gone viral over the years. The postings and videos that have drawn attention are primarily strongly partisan and often generously laced with profanity.
At the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Houston videotaped a retort to conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s social-media post mocking Gus Walz, the son of Minnesota Gov. and then-Democratic vice-presidential hopeful Tim Walz. Coulter has since deleted her post, while Houston’s video, in which she called Coulter one of the “childless monkey women for Trump,” lives on.
Houston, who holds a master’s degree in public health and a law degree from the University of Memphis, began working at the Food and Drug Administration immediately after earning her juris doctorate. She started as a presidential management fellow at the FDA from September 2017 to March 2019, during the first Trump administration, and then served as agovernment information specialist starting in April 2020.
Although she said she was not fired or terminated because of the Department of Government Efficienty cuts, Houston left the FDA in August 2025 and made some headlines in the process. She announced on Instagram her departure from the agency and included a picture of herself making an obscene gesture to the official portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Houston said her cake video demonstrates how easily Republicans “can be ruffled” through an expression of First Amendment rights.
“I think … they got very nervous because somebody decided to throw a little tiny speck of the disrespect that they show the American people every day back at them,” Houston told The Indiana Citizen. “And so, their first thought is, ‘Well, let’s take away her financial security and her job.’ All this did was increase my following, my exposure, and my brand deals on social media.”
Althea Kaminske, president of the IU Indianapolis chapter of the American Association of University Professors, is concerned that the work being done by the faculty and students and the benefit IU provides to the public can be jeopardized when an elected official does not like a cake. Indiana University has about 68,000 undergraduates, 20,000 graduate students and 44,500 employees across the state, she said, so a call to revoke funding over a baked good “just seems like a disproportionate response.”
All the more confounding to Kaminske is the seeming disregard for the First Amendment’s protection in the cake controversy. “This case is clearly an issue of free speech because Prof. Houston acted as a private citizen,” she said.
In the video, Houston does not mention the university, IU McKinney, or her work as an adjunct law professor. She does not even wear IU school colors.
Houston has taught a single class on food and drug law at IU McKinney every spring semester since 2024. Added to the school’s part-time faculty roster after a mentor recommended her for the position, she teaches the class remotely and has never visited the law school.
Yet, Houston said she is proud of the class and finds the students to be very smart and engaged. The course focuses on laws and regulations, which often requires the syllabus to be changed weekly as Trump issues executive orders and the U.S. Supreme Court overturns precedents. Students spend their time researching and writing an analysis of a subject of their choosing, rather than studying for a final exam.
Since the cake video went live, Houston said no one from IU has reached out or had a conversation with her about the post. She earns about $5,000 a year working as an adjunct professor and while the loss of her teaching post would not impose a financial hardship, she said she would “consider all my options” if the termination appeared to be a retaliation for cake video.
“It’s not really about me as an individual,” Houston said. “It’s about the profession as a whole and protecting other professors and other educators. Not everyone can speak up and it’s very important to me, knowing that I have the privilege and the means to do so, that I speak up for the people who can’t.”
Kaminske said long before Houston delivered the cake, IU professors’ ability to speak freely in the classroom has been stifled by elected officials who throw punches at the school on social media and enact new state laws, such as Senate Enrolled Act 202, which is seen by critics as limiting academic freedom.
Faculty are now putting a lot of careful thought into how they teach, Kaminske said. The professors do want to be the next Jessica Adams, a lecture in the IU School of Social Work on the Bloomington campus, who lost her job after a student complained about her class to U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana.
Consequently, under such pressure, Kaminske said, academic freedom and the ability of the university to serve the public is diminished. Free inquiry allows professors and students to push boundaries, ask questions and make discoveries. Limiting such expression can mean some stories do not get told, she said.
“If we have to change how we teach disciplines and sort of our fundamental thinking … every two to four years as different people come into power, it (will be) really difficult to make any sort of progress,” Kaminske said.
PEN America, a nonprofit focused on protecting free expression, saw a danger to targeting faculty and not allowing them to exercise their freedom of speech.
“Lawmakers should not use their political power to coerce universities into firing or disciplining faculty for their protected speech,” Kristen Shahverdian, director of higher education and free expression at PEN America, said in an email. “Even if such speech may offend some, that alone is not grounds for dismissal. University leadership should not succumb to political pressure and should instead follow due process and established guidelines when it comes to reviewing faculty speech, remembering that free speech and academic freedom protections are essential to the functioning of the university.”
Sanders said Houston’s video was “stupid and dumb and juvenile,” but it had nothing to do with her teaching at IU.
If the university were to terminate her employment, it would not be able to overcome her First Amendment protection by simply claiming the social-media post was an embarrassment, Sanders said. Rather, the school would have to show her actions interfered with its interest in maintaining an efficient workplace and then a court would likely apply the Pickering-Connick test, which would weigh the needs of the public institute against the rights of the private individual.
Indiana University and IU McKinney did not respond to requests from The Citizen for comment.
Kaminske hopes the university continues to resist being drawn into the controversy. Politicians are treating the university as a toy, trying to make an example out of a professor, she said, and IU should not undertake what she sees as a futile effort to appease them.
“I would hope that the university would back up the professor and assert that regardless of how they may feel politically about the statement, that the actions are clearly protected under the First Amendment,” Kaminske said. “I would hope that IU is in favor of the First Amendment.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
