This column was originally published by Sheila Kennedy on her blog, “A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.”
By Sheila Kennedy
April 27, 2025
The Trump Administration may be the pre-eminent example of lunacy in government, but the current super-majority in Indiana’s legislature–aided and abetted by our MAGA Governor and his merry band of White Christian Nationalists–are no less impervious to logic, evidence and sound policy.
A report from Indiana Public Media focuses on one example. It begins:
A measure meant to better align education in Indiana to the state’s workforce
needs is headed to the governor’s desk. It received wide support from Senate
lawmakers despite lingering concerns about its effect on colleges, universities
and employers.
SB 448 requires the Commission for Higher Education to approve all degrees and programs
offered by public colleges and universities every 10 years. It also says
those schools must assess and consider their staffing needs when reviewing
tenured professors.
Sen. Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) said he is concerned programs could be cut if
they aren’t considered valuable to the state’s employment needs. Additionally, he
expressed concern that requiring faculty tenure reviews to take specific staffing
needs for approved degrees or programs into account could be detrimental to
other areas of study.
“It can get really dangerous for us to start providing this type of, I don’t know,
nose under the tent ideology,” he said.
Taylor has identified the two major flaws in this state over-reach. I’ve repeatedly posted about the first– lawmakers’ refusal to understand what education is, and why it is not job training. Our public schools and universities have two vitally important tasks: giving the nation’s children and youth the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but the tools to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and equipping them with what I have termed “civic literacy”–enabling them to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.
Education includes things like art, music, literature and philosophy. Presumably, those studies are unnecessary “frills” when the job of the schools is simply to produce worker bees.
But SB 448 not only confuses education with job training, it mimics Trump’s efforts to dictate what can and cannot be taught in the nation’s universities, to control and micro-manage institutions of higher education and to “purge” those institutions of ideas with which our overlords disagree.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities has issued a response to
these efforts. It began:
As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak
with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political
interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to
constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight.
However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who
learn, live, and work on our campuses.
The statement notes that the nation’s colleges and universities are diverse. There are “research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses.” Different schools are designed for different students. In order for these institutions to function properly, they must have the
freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught,
how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as
centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff
are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without
fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.
I encourage you to click through and read the entire statement, which was signed by dozens of university presidents. I doubt it will move the culture warriors in Washington or the Indiana Statehouse, who shrink from “open inquiry” and want to turn our educational institutions into factories spitting out those obedient worker bees. These are limited individuals who view genuine intellectual engagement and inquiry with fear and disdain.
During this session, Indiana’s terrible legislature has doubled down on its war on education. It has stolen even more critical funding from our public schools in order to increase a voucher program that all evidence shows does not improve educational outcomes, and is in reality a First Amendment “work-around” allowing public money to flow to religious schools. In a prior session, it passed a highly intrusive bill misleadingly described as an effort to protect “intellectual diversity” on state campuses–in reality, an effort to purge those campuses of perspectives of which our radical legislators disapprove.
Ironically, those Blue states governed by legislators who understand the difference between job training and education–and who support, rather than undermine, their universities’ missions–also have more robust economies.
Too bad Indiana’s “leaders” can’t connect those dots….
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
