By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
July 27, 2026
Some day, one hopes, our public discussions will stop being dominated by social morons who behave as if they learned their manners in a barnyard.
An adjunct professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis recently touched off another senseless public firestorm. Not long after U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, died, the adjunct posted a video and a photo about Graham’s death that were, to say the least, tasteless.
In the video, the adjunct said Graham was in hell, had gone home to Daddy Satan and that she wouldn’t be praying for his salvation. The photo featured a picture of a cake that was decorated with the word “Congratudolences.”
It was accompanied by a message to the late senator’s sister, who since has been appointed to fill his seat, that reiterated the adjunct’s message that Graham was “burning in hell” and that his sister now was working for the devil.
Classy, classy, classy.
The adjunct’s boorishness sounded a siren call to other boors who live to keep us screaming at each other.
U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, and his fellow Republican Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, among others, reacted with fury.
They demanded that IU fire the adjunct. Beckwith even went so far as to call for the Indiana General Assembly to stop funding the university if the school didn’t throw the adjunct overboard.
There was something rich about that.
Banks and Beckwith rarely, if ever, miss opportunities to demean and insult people who disagree with them—even when, as elected officials, they have a duty to represent the interests of those people.
Beckwith even has called for the Muslim faith to be suppressed, a clear violation of the oath he took to support U.S. and Indiana constitutions—both of which have strict protections for religious faiths, including those the lieutenant governor doesn’t like.
If we’re going to start tossing people off government payrolls for saying things that other people find offensive, we shouldn’t start with a low-level academic whose record suggests a desperate desire to attract attention.
No, we should begin with elected officials who betray both their oaths of office and the people they’re supposed to serve.
But that’s not the way we do things in this country.
Nor is it the way we should do things.
The reason the founders of this nation and state built such sturdy protections for free expression into our founding documents is that they understood that freedom wasn’t for the faint of heart or those with tender sensibilities. They realized that self-government often was going to be a bruising business in which feelings could be hurt.
But they decided that a free-for-all was preferable to an environment in which truth could be easily and often suppressed.
Because that was the point—freedom was and is supposed to be free for all.
In practice, this means we can’t fire a state-employed adjunct professor for being an insensitive clod or the lieutenant governor for trying to carry the intolerant spirit of the Crusades into the 21st century.
Within very broad parameters, our adherence to principles of free speech protects our right to be insensitive idiots if that is what we choose to be.
But the fact that we have the right to say crass, cloddish and hurtful things doesn’t mean that it is right to do so.
The adjunct professor—whom I’ve chosen not to name because her record suggests that at least part of her motivation is a desire for notoriety—has a history of performing provocative acts, supposedly in the service of progressive causes.
In this case, though, did dancing on Lindsey Graham’s grave bring anyone over to her side of the debate who wasn’t already there?
Did she manage to prove anything other than that she can perfectly mirror exactly the same sort of cultural and personal insensitivity she claims to abhor?
And Banks and Beckwith proved once again that they’re far more eager to exploit problems than they are to solve them, far hungrier to widen divisions than to bridge them.
If there’s one reason this country and state struggle now, it is that.
The loudest voices among us prefer fights to solutions.
They live to fight and profit from endless battles, while most of us just want to figure out how to get along with each other.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, 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.
