IU Professor Investigated for Graphic About White Supremacy Loses Job

A lecturer at Indiana University who was investigated last year over a graphic about white supremacy learned this week that she would not be reappointed next year, according to Indiana Public Media.

The lecturer, Jessica Adams, said she was reported by a student for using the graphic, which was created by the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence to outline “overt” and “covert” forms of white supremacy, in her course Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice.

Adams was anonymously reported for violating a 2024 law that requires faculty to highlight diverse viewpoints in their teaching. During the investigation, she was removed from teaching the class. She was later sanctioned by the university, but she “didn’t think my employment was in jeopardy,” she told Indiana Public Media.

The University Alliance for Racial Justice, an organization of students, staff and faculty at IU, said in a news release that, in accordance with university policy, the institution should have given her more notice that she was not being reappointed. The group said that Adams’s removal was part of a larger pattern “of institutional overcompliance and political pressure affecting higher education in Indiana.”

A university spokesperson told Indiana Public Media that it would not comment on personnel matters.