Tag: hell

  • What the hell is going on at Indiana University?

    What the hell is going on at Indiana University?

    Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. 

    That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech.

    You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.

    Take action now — tell Indiana University it can’t fire a free press

    And to make sure the school’s odious status fully benefits from the Streisand effect, we want to explain in excruciating detail exactly how the school earned such a low ranking. 

    “The president has called snipers on protestors before.” 

    That’s what one IU student told FIRE when asked for our annual survey to describe a time they felt they could not express their views on campus because of how other students, faculty, or administrators would respond. Another student told us:

    “When I, as a student leader and representative of my entire campus, had a sniper gun pointed at me when trying to defend a protest that was in compliance with school policies.”

    Both comments refer to how IU handled the pro-Palestinian protest encampments in the spring of 2024. On the eve of the protest at Dunn Meadow — a campus green space where students set up “shantytowns” in 1986 to protest and demand divestment from apartheid South Africa — administrators held an 11th-hour meeting and enacted a more restrictive speech policy banning unauthorized structures such as tents. The next day, they called in state police. That’s when officers with sniper rifles took position on the Indiana Memorial Union roof.

    The year prior, IU ranked 243 out of 251 schools in our College Free Speech Rankings and was the second-worst public university overall. This year, after the sniper incident, IU ranks 255 out of 257 schools — performing poorly in terms of openness (255), administrative support (251), self-censorship (246), and comfort expressing ideas (227). 

    When asked this year whether they had ever been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their expression on campus, roughly a quarter of IU students said yes. 2% said they had been disciplined and 21% said they had been threatened with it. 

    We told you IU was a bad place for free speech.

    IU faculty agree. Almost three-quarters of those we surveyed last year from March 4 to May 13 said it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus, while 69% said academic freedom is “not at all” or “not very” secure on their campus.

    In April 2024, faculty launched a petition calling for a vote of “no confidence” in the university’s leadership. They cited encroachments on academic freedom and shared governance, highlighting examples that raised concerns about viewpoint discrimination. These included the university’s suspension of associate professor Abdulkader Sinno from his advising role after he publicly criticized the university for denying a room reservation to the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group he advised, as well as its cancellation of an art exhibit and talk featuring Palestinian artist Samia Halaby at its campus museum. 

    That no-confidence resolution passed, with 93% of the 948 faculty members in attendance voting in favor.

    Those two incidents negatively impacted IU’s performance in the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, and the cancellation of Halaby’s exhibition and talk also hurt IU in this year’s rankings.

    But that’s not all. This year, IU was also penalized for: 

    • Postponing a campus event featuring prominent pro-Israel activist and Hamas critic Mosab Hassan Yousef after multiple student groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Middle Eastern Student Association, criticized the event and called Yousef “Islamophobic.” IU told Yousef that it was postponing the event because of “security threats involving the Muslim community and several white supremacist groups.” The event was not rescheduled.
    • Failing to stop student protesters from disrupting a talk between Senator Jim Banks and Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichick by pushing and harassing attendees, chanting to disrupt the event, and accusing the speakers of supporting “genocide” and “killing children.” The discussion was halted as police removed several protesters. The event then continued without further disruption.
    • Canceling the LGBTQ+ Health Care Conference after President Trump issued executive orders restricting the use of federal funds for DEI initiatives.
    • Banning three students from campus for a year after they were arrested for trespassing during the aforementioned suddenly out-of-bounds pro-Palestinian encampment in Dunn Meadow.

    And then, last week, the school fired its Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush and then doubled down on its censorship efforts by ordering the student newspaper Indiana Daily Student to cease its print publication because it published two stories about the school suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee and about how the school was the worst-ranked public university in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings. 

    We told you Indiana University was a bad school for free speech. In fact, it’s literally one of the worst. And the public is as outraged as we are — so far, over 1,700 people have sent our Take Action email to IU President Pamela Whitten telling her she can’t censor a free press.

    Congratulations Indiana, you’ve managed to outdo yourself. See you at the bottom next year.

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  • What the hell is going on at Indiana University?

    What the hell is going on at Indiana University?

    Indiana University banned its student newspaper from printing just days before homecoming weekend — after firing the paper’s advisor when he refused to censor critical coverage. 

    That would be bad enough on its own, but FIRE is taking this one personally, as the Indiana Daily Student reported this hostile campaign was due in part to its coverage of FIRE’s ranking Indiana University as the worst public university for free speech.

    You read that right. The school’s response to the news that they are bad at free speech … is to censor the news. It’s ironic — and not just in the Alanis Morissette sense — that these actions will likely push its overall ranking even lower next year. At least we can’t fault them for consistency.

    Take action now — tell Indiana University it can’t fire a free press

    And to make sure the school’s odious status fully benefits from the Streisand effect, we want to explain in excruciating detail exactly how the school earned such a low ranking. 

    “The president has called snipers on protestors before.” 

    That’s what one IU student told FIRE when asked for our annual survey to describe a time they felt they could not express their views on campus because of how other students, faculty, or administrators would respond. Another student told us:

    “When I, as a student leader and representative of my entire campus, had a sniper gun pointed at me when trying to defend a protest that was in compliance with school policies.”

    Both comments refer to how IU handled the pro-Palestinian protest encampments in the spring of 2024. On the eve of the protest at Dunn Meadow — a campus green space where students set up “shantytowns” in 1986 to protest and demand divestment from apartheid South Africa — administrators held an 11th-hour meeting and enacted a more restrictive speech policy banning unauthorized structures such as tents. The next day, they called in state police. That’s when officers with sniper rifles took position on the Indiana Memorial Union roof.

    The year prior, IU ranked 243 out of 251 schools in our College Free Speech Rankings and was the second-worst public university overall. This year, after the sniper incident, IU ranks 255 out of 257 schools — performing poorly in terms of openness (255), administrative support (251), self-censorship (246), and comfort expressing ideas (227). 

    2026 College Free Speech Rankings: America’s colleges get an ‘F’ for poor free speech climate

    The sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings show a continued decline in support for free speech among all students, but particularly conservatives.


    Read More

    When asked this year whether they had ever been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their expression on campus, roughly a quarter of IU students said yes. 2% said they had been disciplined and 21% said they had been threatened with it. 

    We told you IU was a bad place for free speech.

    IU faculty agree. Almost three-quarters of those we surveyed last year from March 4 to May 13 said it is “not at all” or “not very” clear that the administration protects free speech on campus, while 69% said academic freedom is “not at all” or “not very” secure on their campus.

    In April 2024, faculty launched a petition calling for a vote of “no confidence” in the university’s leadership. They cited encroachments on academic freedom and shared governance, highlighting examples that raised concerns about viewpoint discrimination. These included the university’s suspension of associate professor Abdulkader Sinno from his advising role after he publicly criticized the university for denying a room reservation to the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group he advised, as well as its cancellation of an art exhibit and talk featuring Palestinian artist Samia Halaby at its campus museum. 

    That no-confidence resolution passed, with 93% of the 948 faculty members in attendance voting in favor.

    Those two incidents negatively impacted IU’s performance in the 2025 College Free Speech Rankings, and the cancellation of Halaby’s exhibition and talk also hurt IU in this year’s rankings.

    But that’s not all. This year, IU was also penalized for: 

    • Postponing a campus event featuring prominent pro-Israel activist and Hamas critic Mosab Hassan Yousef after multiple student groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Middle Eastern Student Association, criticized the event and called Yousef “Islamophobic.” IU told Yousef that it was postponing the event because of “security threats involving the Muslim community and several white supremacist groups.” The event was not rescheduled.
    • Failing to stop student protesters from disrupting a talk between Senator Jim Banks and Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichick by pushing and harassing attendees, chanting to disrupt the event, and accusing the speakers of supporting “genocide” and “killing children.” The discussion was halted as police removed several protesters. The event then continued without further disruption.
    • Canceling the LGBTQ+ Health Care Conference after President Trump issued executive orders restricting the use of federal funds for DEI initiatives.
    • Banning three students from campus for a year after they were arrested for trespassing during the aforementioned suddenly out-of-bounds pro-Palestinian encampment in Dunn Meadow.

    And then, last week, the school fired its Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush and then doubled down on its censorship efforts by ordering the student newspaper Indiana Daily Student to cease its print publication because it published two stories about the school suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee and about how the school was the worst-ranked public university in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings. 

    Front page of Indiana Daily Student Homecoming Edition on Thursday, October 16, 2025.https://issuu.com/idsnews/docs/indiana_daily_student_homecoming_eedition_-_thursd

    We told you Indiana University was a bad school for free speech. In fact, it’s literally one of the worst. And the public is as outraged as we are — so far, over 1,700 people have sent our Take Action email to IU President Pamela Whitten telling her she can’t censor a free press.

    Congratulations Indiana, you’ve managed to outdo yourself. See you at the bottom next year.

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  • ‘What the hell just happened?’ Australia’s flirtation with a levy on international students – By Professor Andrew Norton

    ‘What the hell just happened?’ Australia’s flirtation with a levy on international students – By Professor Andrew Norton

    • This blog has been kindly written for HEPI by Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy at Monash Business School, Monash University.
    • The thoughts of Nick Hillman, HEPI’s Director, on the levy can be read on the Research Professional News website here.

    For an Australian reader the UK immigration white paper’s proposal for a levy on international student fee revenue sounds familiar. In mid-2023 just such a levy was suggested for Australia by the interim report of a major higher education policy review. Like its UK version, the idea was to reinvest levy revenue in education. While the interim report lacked white paper status, education minister Jason Clare liked the idea enough to mention it in his report launch speech. 

    But now the levy has vanished from the Australian policy agenda. When the Universities Accord final report was released in February 2024 the levy idea was there but postponed, shunted off until after other major funding reforms that will start in 2027 at the earliest. So far as I can find, the Minister – newly reappointed this week after Labor’s election victory on 3 May – has not mentioned the idea in public for 18 months.

    So what happened? Predictably, the universities that stood to lose the most from the levy opposed it. But the bigger reason was that between mid-2023 and late 2023 the politics of international education in Australia were turned upside down. In a few months international education went from a valuable export industry to a cause of Australia’s housing shortages. International student numbers had to be cut. 

    As originally proposed in Australia the international student levy was not linked to migration policy. Some reduction in student demand was predicted, as levy costs were passed on through higher fees. But this was a policy side-effect, not its goal. If too many international students were deterred the levy would not raise enough money to achieve its domestic objectives. The Government needed more effective ways of bringing international student numbers back down. 

    Between October 2023 and July 2024 the Australian Government introduced, on my count, nine measures to block or discourage would-be international students. 

    Among the Government’s nine measures was one that delivered it international student revenue much more quickly than the proposed levy. The Government more than doubled student visa application fees from A$710 (~£330) to A$1,600 (~£745), claiming that the money would be spent on policies benefiting domestic students. During the 2025 election campaign Labor said it would increase visa fees again, to A$2,000 (~£930). The UK’s £524 fee looks cheap by comparison. 

    Higher visa fees and other migration measures had two big advantages over the once-proposed levy from the perspective of the Australian Government – legal ease and speed in delivering on migration goals. In Australia, many migration changes can be made by ministerial determination without parliamentary review. The levy required legislation. Australia’s system of sending controversial legislation to often-bruising Senate inquiries increases political costs, even when the bill ultimately passes.

    What visa fees lack is the Robin Hood element of the Australian levy as proposed. In 2023 the University of Sydney alone earned 14% of all university international student fee revenue. The top six universities received more than half of the total. Levy advocates argue that these gains are built on past taxpayer subsidies and prime real estate. Profits built on these foundations can legitimately be taxed for the wider benefit of Australian higher education. 

    In Australia generally, and under Labor governments especially, an egalitarian political culture gives these levy arguments some resonance. But for the foreseeable future migration is a bigger issue than university funding, and visa policies a more straightforward way of bringing down international student numbers than levies. Perhaps the levy idea will return, but the government’s long silence on the subject suggests that this will not happen anytime soon.

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  • Euro visions: What the hell just happened?

    Euro visions: What the hell just happened?

    I swear if I was Danish or Lithuanian or Greek or something I wouldn’t have this problem.

    But (no) thanks to the byzantine bureaucrats at the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation, I have somehow been rejected for media accreditation to cover the higher education aspects of the Eurovision Song Contest for the third year in a row.

    It’s all the more baffling because not only did I send them some examples of the pieces I’d write (“Why Eurovision’s new voting algorithm provides inspiration for reform of income contingent student loans”, that sort of thing), I even removed my glasses for the pass photo to avoid a repeat of last year’s fracas in the Euroclub — when an ex-pat from Portugal TV demanded an interview with me in the Euroculub because he thought Ken Bruce had come to see Jedward.

    Anyway, undeterred I’ll be flying off later to stay in a converted monastery in this year’s host country Switzerland, where I’ll spend the week leading a double life by pretending to be an academic during the day (so I can eat discounted Zuger Kirschtorte in a mensa) and pretending to be a fan of music at night (so I can watch Croatian entry Marko Bošnjak screaming his way through Poison Cake in a badminton arena.)

    And so I thought I’d start the week by looking at where we’re at with Europe.

    I place a plank on a plank and call it a boat

    Back in 2020, then education secretary Gavin Williamson said that Turing, the post-Brexit successor to Erasmus+, would “expand opportunities to study abroad and see more students from all backgrounds benefit from the experience”.

    But since then the living allowance rates have already been cut to the bone (£14 per day for Switzerland, which would barely buy you a Schnitzel and chips), and schools and FE colleges have had their funding capped at about 50 placements each.

    The UK government can point and has pointed to increased participation in outward mobility — and a much broader range of countries being visited. But we’re missing out on the social and educational benefits of the collapse in EU inward, and under the headlines, in a huge number of cases, the outward are very short trips rather than proper study abroad.

    As I often argue on our SU study tours, the danger in that approach is that you barely get beyond noticing that they call a Twix a Raider before you’re on the flight back — when it’s the longer term immersion that can bring deeper rewards.

    And it may all well get worse. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a spending review on – and back in March The Times reported that as well as offering up for the chop universal free meals for infants, funding for free period products and a raft of dance, music and PE schemes, secretary of state Bridget Phillipson has suggested that the Turing scheme could go altogether.

    Guess which ones would win out of feeding kids, buying tampons, playing the Trombone and flying to Frankfurt for a fortnight.

    That’s life, and what a miracle

    The EU might yet push us in the other direction, though. There’s an EU summit on 19th May, and the slipstream of trade deals with the US and India, Keir Starmer has been rolling the pitch on a closer partnership with the EU, arguing that the British public has “moved on” from Brexit and suggesting that alignment over food standards, closer working on law enforcement and a “controlled youth mobility scheme” are all on the cards.

    That may not be enough. A large group of member states were already frustrated at what intransigence from the UK in the negotiations, mainly over their demand that students using their mobility rights would get to pay the same tuition fees as UK students if they enrol into a UK university for a year or so.

    Now they’re demanding a full re-join of Erasmus+, partly because back when we were still part of the scheme, the UK was the third most popular study destination behind only Spain and Germany.

    In the Telegraph, Lord Frost – our lead negotiator over the eventual Brexit deal – seems to think that that would continue:

    Erasmus will always be a net cost to the UK because more EU students want to come to Britain than Brits want to study in Europe. That is still the case because we have the best universities and the English language. We don’t need to pay the European Commission to get people to come here.

    I might be wrong about this – I often am – but right now given the state of the UK and the way in which cuts are raining down in universities, I’d wager that spending a semester in Badajoz, Białystok or Blagoevgrad or whatever looks infinitely more attractive in 2025 than it did in 2019. They’re all more likely to be teaching in English than they were a decade ago, and there’s a much better chance that your chosen modules will actually run when you get there.

    And anyway, what Frosty’s little England analysis also misses are the incalculable soft power and medium-term economic benefits that having a large number of EU students coming to the UK for a year offers. People routinely wax on about their Erasmus experience as life-changing – building friendships and connections that later end up as the sort of trading partnerships that Starmer is supposed to be rebuilding.

    How much time do we have left together

    It’s also worth bearing in mind how Erasmus+ has been changing. As well as the traditional study placements that most will understand, there’s a new European Student Card Initiative (ESCI) which will streamline access to libraries, transport, and cultural activities, a new app offering access to learning agreements, destination information and a digital version of the student card. The European Solidarity Corps offers young people the chance to volunteer or work in projects that benefit communities across Europe, and Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs) that combine physical and virtual learning, and International Credit Mobility options that extend beyond Europe.

    There’s also the DiscoverEU initiative, which provides free rail passes to encourage cultural exploration and connection, new Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) to drive collaboration between vocational education providers, businesses, and research centres, a Green Erasmus+ initiative, which prioritises projects with a positive environmental impact and offers support for green travel options, and Erasmus+ Teacher Academies — which are supporting the professional development of staff and promoting innovative teaching practice across Europe.

    Meanwhile the 64 separate European University Alliances are providing students with the chance to study across multiple countries, the European Degree programme will offer joint qualifications that carry a special European label — making it easier for students to have their qualifications recognised across border — and there’s ongoing work to improve and automate ECTS credit transfer, along with a whole bunch of digital innovation stuff.

    Given some of the problems with skills and teaching innovation in the system back home, and the weird reality of an impending credit-based student finance system with barely and progress on credit transfer, add all of that up and any sensible Department for Education would be as desperate to get us back into Erasmus+ and wider EU projects as DSIT was to get us back into Horizon.

    Interestingly, Eurovision host country Switzerland – which has of course never been a member of the EU – used to take part in Erasmus+, but was chucked out in 2014 following a referendum that voted to limit mass immigration.

    That meant that like us, Swiss universities could no longer participate fully in student exchanges and had to negotiate individual bilateral agreements with each partner university, creating no end of administrative burdens.

    SEMP – The Swiss Programme for Erasmus+ – does enable exchange activities, but universities taking part have to finance 40 per cent of costs, with the remaining 60 per cent covered by the federal government.

    But since 2023, Switzerland has pursued a new package with the EU, keen to re-establish relations in trade, transport, education, and research. The resultant December 2024 deal granted access to Horizon Europe, Euratom and the Digital Europe programmes earlier this year – and it’s set return to Erasmus+ in 2027 subject to parliamentary approval and a likely referendum in 2026.

    (They love their referendums in Switzerland. There was even one to approve the expenditure on Eurovision in the Basel-Stadt canton – the socially conservative EDU called it a “propaganda event” labelling 2024’s event as a “celebration of evil”, while the populist Swiss People’s Party said that the money would be better donated to those seriously affected by Summer 2024’s Swiss storms than “wasted on this embarrassing rainbow event”. United by Music and all that – Yes won by 66.5 per cent to No’s 33.5 per cent.)

    Sadly, with UK universities keen to see any pennies left spent on their excel sheets, and higher education stuck in an always-distracted schools department, it may not happen — and if it does, it’ll be down to EU negotiators clocking that Starmer needs a deal that can help neutralise growing youth support for populism back home.

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