OPINION: IU’s denunciation of pro-Palestinian speech is an affront to academic freedom
Joey Sills | 15 January 2024 | Indiana Daily Student
Alfred Kinsey was all set. After eight years of study at the IU Institute for Sex Research, he and his team gathered over 11,000 unique personal sexual histories, according to a report from University Historian James Capshew. By 1948, they were ready to publish their first book and the culmination of their work, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.”
Herman B Wells, the president of IU at the time, sent a memo to the university’s Executive Committee months before the book’s publication, detailing his belief that the work was bound to stir up controversy. As president, he felt it was within his duty to outline the administration’s response to the research. But far from a condemnation of the contents held therein, Wells reiterated the imperative of intellectual and academic freedom.
“It seems to me it is essential that we stand firm in our support of the book and the research,” he wrote in the memo. “We are not called upon to endorse the findings, but are called upon to stand firm in support of the importance of the project and the right to publish it. Any less than that would be fatal.”