In Indiana, a Campus Newspaper Adviser Fights for the ‘Soul of Our Country’

Jim Rodenbush refused to make students stop printing hard news. He got fired. Then he became a national hero.

For the better part of a decade, Jim Rodenbush was the adviser to the Indiana Daily Student, at Indiana University in Bloomington, which has a staff of about two hundred. Then, one afternoon last October, the dean told him that he was fired, effective immediately. A human resources representative collected his ID and keys, asked for his laptop, and escorted him from the building. His apparent transgression: resisting a directive from the administration to stop the students from printing hard news.

In recent weeks, the Daily Student had been working on ambitious stories, including one on how Indiana’s data center boom was at odds with the state’s climate goals. Administrators pushed back, telling Rodenbush to have students print only special sections, like a homecoming guide—which they said was a cost-saving measure. Rodenbush viewed the reaction as censorship. “I’m a full-time employee of a public university, which makes me an actor of the government, and any type of attempt on my end to censor or manipulate any content from a student media outlet is literally against the law,” he told administrators during a meeting, according to a recording that was shared with me. “This is First Amendment stuff.”