Editor's note
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.
Trust certain kinds of politicians to find ways to make bad situations worse.
U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana—also a candidate for the U.S. Senate—is but the latest example.
Banks just published an op-ed piece in The Indianapolis Star urging support for embattled Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and calling for a crackdown on student and faculty protesters at IU.
It was a foolish piece.
Banks—whose desire to appeal to the know-nothing, ignorance-is-bliss MAGA crowd apparently is without bounds—published his commentary just before the ACLU of Indiana filed suit against IU. (Disclosure: Twenty years ago, I was executive director of what is now the ACLU of Indiana.)
The suit was as inevitable as the arrival of night following day’s end.
IU’s actions leading up to the arrests of 56 individuals are all but legally indefensible. University officials changed the school’s rules regarding protests the night before the arrests occurred.
Then, without notice to the protesters, the university proceeded to implement the new rules. Peaceful protesters found themselves arrested by the dozens while Indiana State Police snipers observed them from rooftop perches.
Those arrested—be they students, faculty members or Bloomington residents—were told they were banned from campus for one year.
This, before any court has determined whether they even committed a crime.
The problems with due process and other essential legal and constitutional questions doubtless elude Banks.
He’s a lawmaker whose knowledge of the law seems not to extend beyond the fact that the word “law” has three letters in it. On a good day, he sometimes even can put those letters in the right order.
The ACLU’s lawsuit on behalf of three plaintiffs—an IU faculty member, a graduate student and a Bloomington resident—focuses on IU’s failure as a public university and thus an arm of government to protect the three citizens’ First Amendment rights. The argument is that the year-long ban prevents them from taking part in the continuing protests.
But that’s the lowest-hanging fruit in this bit of tragic folly.
There are many other avenues for litigation that can and likely will be explored in the weeks ahead. On none of them does IU have a strong defense.
There is a cost to this adventure in authoritarian idiocy. If IU loses—as it most probably will—the university will be on the hook not only for its own legal fees but for those of the ACLU and any judgment the court awards the plaintiffs.
Even if IU throws up its hands now and acknowledges its overreaction and error, it still will have to pay the ACLU’s legal fees even if the plaintiffs opt to be gracious and accept the apology.
That’s a wise use of taxpayer funds, don’t you think?
Banks wrote in his op-ed column that he was siding with IU and Whitten because of his deep concern about anti-Semitism. He said that the Indiana State Police reported hearing protesters yell such slurs.
All other witnesses reported hearing only criticism of the government of Israel, not attacks on people who are Jewish. Conflating criticism of the Israeli government’s actions or policies with bigotry against all Jewish people is itself a form of bigotry.
But let us grant that Banks’ concern is genuine.
On the day after his op-ed appeared, one of his Republican colleagues in the House—U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia—came out against a bill opposing expressions of anti-Semitism.
Greene said she worried that the bill would make it illegal for her or anyone else to say that “the Jews killed Jesus.” This is the same legislator who once argued that “Jewish space lasers” caused wildfires.
Now, given Banks’ fervent need to crack down on anti-Semitism, he doubtless will demand that the leadership of the House impose the same penalties on Greene and anyone who thinks like her that he wants to see inflicted on the protesters at IU.
He will argue that Greene be expelled from the House, even though her departure would cost Republicans their slim majority in that chamber.
That would be the only consistent and principled course of action for Banks.
Somehow, though, I doubt Banks has the same appetite for tangling with a full-throated wacko like Greene that he does for picking fights with the Birkenstock-wearing demonstrators at IU.
His courage, like his outrage, is selective.
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