BY HANK REICHMAN

The other day I had occasion to speak with a leader of the AAUP chapter at Columbia University, my alma mater.  I mentioned to him how useful and impressive I have found the coverage of university events in the student-run campus daily newspaper, the Spectator.  He agreed that the students have done an extraordinary job not only in keeping people informed but in providing a high level of analysis and insight.  To be sure, the Spectator has long served as a prominent training ground for some of journalism’s leading lights, but it hardly stands alone.  Uncensored student media provide an essential bulwark in defense of academic freedom and student rights at hundreds of institutions nationwide.  But their independence and rights are under assault.

In 2016, the AAUP, the College Media Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the Student Press Law Center issued a joint report, Threats to the Independence of Student Media, which remains as relevant, if not more, today than it was nine years ago.  “It has become disturbingly routine for student journalists and their advisers to experience overt hostility that threatens their ability to inform the campus community and, in some instances, imperils their careers or the survival of their publications,” the report observed.  “Administrative efforts to subordinate campus journalism to public relations are inconsistent with the mission of higher education to provide a space for intellectual exploration and debate.”

I was reminded this week that a major impetus for that report had been the growing pressure on faculty media advisers “to control, edit, or censor student journalistic content.”  The 2016 report described incidents at seven different universities, just a sampling of cases where faculty advisers had been dismissed from their positions for refusing to engage in censorship.  This week brings another incident (surely not the only one) that we can add to the list.  The following is from a piece in the Indiana Daily Student, since 1867 the campus newspaper at Indiana University:

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: IU fires student media director after he refused to censor the IDS

By Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller
Oct 14, 2025 7:47 pm · Updated Oct 15, 2025 12:29 pm

Media School Dean David Tolchinsky terminated Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush on Tuesday afternoon after he refused to censor the Indiana Daily Student.

Ahead of our Oct. 16 newspaper, which was to include a Homecoming guide inside, the Media School directed us to print no news in the paper, an order blatantly in defiance of our editorial independence and the Student Media Charter.

“… nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage,” read Rodenbush’s Oct. 7 email to the IDS co-editors-in-chief, relaying the IU Media School’s directive.

Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship, established by legal precedent surrounding speech law on public college campuses.

Administrators ignored Rodenbush, who said he would not tell us what to print or not print in our paper.  In a meeting Sept. 25 with administrators, he said doing so would be censorship.

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.

In fact, Rodenbush took his concerns directly to the dean.  Someone who oversees the instruction of journalism and should have a comprehensive understanding of censorship.

“Any type of attempt on my end to censor or manipulate any content from a student media outlet is literally against the law,” Rodenbush said during their Oct. 9 meeting.  “This is First Amendment stuff.”

We emailed several Media School administrators Monday, asking them for more clarity behind the order and requesting they rescind their directive.

Instead of a clear response, they fired a faculty member. [emphasis added]

Rodenbush’s termination letter

On Tuesday afternoon, they terminated Rodenbush, effective immediately.  “Your lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” the termination letter read. . . .

To be clear, the types of stories that run on any of the IDS’ platforms — from our print edition to our website and social media feeds — are at the sole discretion of the editors-in-chief.  The IDS has an over 158-year-long history of strong editorial independence, a principle outlined clearly in our Student Media Charter, available for any administrator or member of the public to view.  It’s this editorial independence that has allowed us to hold university administrators and those in power across the state to account.

IU and the Media School’s history of supporting our independence is part of why its journalism program was so well-respected for decades.  But now, despite this history — and in defiance of decades of court cases protecting student journalists’ editorial independence — IU’s directive to stop printing news is “an expectation, not a suggestion,” according to the order relayed by Rodenbush.

This blatant misunderstanding or disregard of what constitutes “content” and “editorial independence” — foundational concepts students learn during the journalism program’s required media law course — is cause for alarm.

This unacceptable termination of a faculty media adviser was framed as a “business decision.”  The powers that be in Bloomington were clearly concerned with public relations.  They wanted nothing that might disturb alums, donors, and others in town for homecoming.  But as the 2016 report emphasized, “oversight of campus-based media should be structured to prevent those outside the student editor’s office from overruling editorial judgments or retaliating for journalistic choices.  Absolute boundaries should separate the selection of editorial content from the financial and managerial oversight by campus administrators or appointed publication boards. . . .  No postsecondary institution should require its faculty or staff to clear interactions with the student media through an institutional public-relations office, nor should campus public-relations offices obstruct student journalists from gaining direct access to those in positions of official authority.”

That’s hardly the only threat to student journalists, however.  On October 15, the Student Press Law Center, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Association, and 55 student media outlets and newsroom leaders filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed in August by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on behalf of the Stanford Daily challenging Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s use of two federal immigration law provisions to revoke international students’ visas and deport them for constitutionally protected speech.

Similar to the AAUP’s victorious (so far) suit in Massachusetts, AAUP v. Rubio, this suit, however, focuses on the threat to a free press posed by the government’s immigration policies.  Responding both to rumors that ICE was on the Stanford campus (which turned out to be false) and to the disclosure that six Stanford international students had their visas revoked, the Daily‘s editors expressed concern “that student speech, from our own reporters and those we’re reporting on, is startlingly chilled.  Both students and faculty have been increasingly hesitant to speak to The Daily and increasingly worried about comments that have already been made on the record.  Some reporters have been choosing to step away from stories in order to keep their name detached from topics that might draw unwanted attention.  Even authors of dated opinion pieces have expressed fear that their words might retroactively put them in danger. ”

“As an independent student paper whose mission is to represent the voices of the Stanford community, this fear of the government directly impacts the quality of our work,” the editors concluded.  “With every resignation and refusal to speak on the record, we actively miss out on covering an entire group of students’ voices — as well as the many events and stories on campus that benefit from an international student’s perspective.”  Hence, “we decided to move forward with the lawsuit.”

The amicus brief filed in the case returns me to the Columbia Spectator.  For while my Columbia colleague and I could marvel at that paper’s depth and the boldness of its coverage, apparently some university administrators there don’t always see it that way.  In supporting the Stanford journalists, the amici cite cases nationwide in which pressure has been exerted on journalists, including this: “in spring 2025, the Office of Institutional Equity at Columbia University formally accused two students, both U.S. citizens, of “discriminatory harassment” and initiated disciplinary proceedings in connection with an op-ed published by the Columbia Spectator that was critical of Israel.”

The amici write:

Targeting international student journalists doesn’t just punish speech—it erases perspective.  International student journalists bring worldviews shaped by different political systems, cultures, and lived experiences.  Their participation enriches campus dialogue, broadens understanding of global issues, and exposes all students to the practice of democracy as both an American ideal and a universal value.  And limiting that exposure harms not only the noncitizen student who wishes to speak but also those who wish to hear them—even when the message is one the government dislikes.

The 1967 Joint Statement on Rights and Freedoms of Students declared and the 2016 report reaffirmed:

Student publications and the student press are valuable aids in establishing and maintaining an atmosphere of free and responsible discussion and of intellectual exploration on the campus.  They are a means of bringing student concerns to the attention of the faculty and the institutional authorities and of formulating student opinion on various issues on the campus and in the world at large.

Whenever possible the student newspaper should be an independent corporation financially and legally separate from the college or university.  Where financial and legal autonomy is not possible, the institution, as the publisher of student publications, may have to bear the legal responsibility for the contents of the publications.  In the delegation of editorial responsibility to students, the institution must provide sufficient editorial freedom and financial autonomy for the student publications to maintain their integrity of purpose as vehicles for free inquiry and free expression in an academic community.

Threats to the Independence of Student Media‘s conclusion bears repeating:

Ultimately, ensuring a campus environment conducive to substantive journalistic coverage requires a significant cultural readjustment that begins with those at the topmost levels of higher education.  It is fashionable for colleges and universities to embrace “civic engagement” as part of their educational mission, but effective citizen engagement in campus affairs depends on well-supported news coverage with meaningful and timely access to information.  Few colleges and universities are “walking the walk” of civic engagement in their governance of journalism, and too many are abandoning higher education’s traditional commitment to free and independent journalistic voices.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019.  His Understanding Academic Freedom was published in October, 2021; a second edition came out in March.  As Committee A chair at the time he was a principal author of Threats to the Independence of Student Media.