Senate bill could change college faculty tenure dramatically
A bill passed the Indiana Senate today that could do away with tenure as we know it.
Senate Bill 202 would require regular reviews of tenured faculty to determine whether they meet certain criteria related to “intellectual diversity.”
Critics of the plan include Robert Eno, an officer of the IU-Bloomington chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He said this would make it easier to fire veteran faculty members based on viewpoints they do or don’t express.
“I think no matter what your what your political view may be, the effect of all this is going to be to make recruitment of top faculty and retention of top faculty extremely difficult in Indiana,” Eno said.
The bill’s author, Republican Senator Spencer Deery of Tippecanoe County, frames the bill as modernizing tenure. He said his intention is to protect diverse viewpoints, not silence them.
“Infringing on academic freedom is a red line we should not cross,” Deery told the Senate. “But we don’t need to give up on these values to curb the excessive politicalization and viewpoint discrimination that threatens our state’s workforce goals.”
Deery once worked at Purdue University as deputy chief of staff for then-president Mitch Daniels.
He cited a Gallup study showing that 46 percent of conservative students in Indiana believed they could openly express opinions compared to 79 percent of liberal students.
Democratic Senator Greg Taylor of Indianapolis questioned his reading of the data.
“That to me says that students don’t feel like they can express themselves more than the universities actually purposefully saying, ‘we don’t want this kind of discussion on our campus,’” Taylor said.
IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav called the bill disruptive in remarks at the Bloomington Faculty Council last week. He said the university is working with other universities in the state to monitor and address the situation. He also said he has shared his concerns with Senate leadership.
The bill is similar to a Florida law adopted in 2023 that requires faculty at state universities to go before a tenure review board every five years.
The bill now goes to the House for consideration.
