The sun was casting shadows onto the green grass of Dunn Meadow at Indiana University Bloomington, as a line of police carrying batons and shields moved forward.

Across from the police stood a daisy chain of protesters, their arms linked in front of a newly established pro-Palestine encampment. The cluster of tents resembled dozens of other encampments set up at universities across the United States in recent weeks, as demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza reached a fever pitch.

College campuses in the US have long been bastions of academic freedom and political protest, and Indiana University was no exception. For 55 years, Dunn Meadow had been its designated “assembly ground”, an area the university itself described as a “public forum for expression on all subjects”.

But that changed on April 24, as university administrators swiftly revised policies that had been on the books since 1969.

While the university had previously allowed “the use of signs, symbols or structures” for protests on the meadow, the change banned temporary structures without prior approval. The very next day, police appeared to dismantle the encampment — and arrest students.

The move catapulted Indiana University to the forefront of a heated debate: Are those protesting the war in Gaza facing disproportionate challenges to their rights to free speech and expression?

“Students and faculty and community members have gathered at this meadow for decades, and it has never been met with this,” said Benjamin Robinson, a professor of Germanic studies at the university who joined the protesters on April 25.

He was ultimately arrested, along with about 50 other demonstrators, all of whom received an immediate year-long ban from campus.

“Now I’m seeing this militarised, overwhelming, disproportionate show of force,” Robinson told Al Jazeera. “It makes you wonder: Why this time? Why is this time different?”

Possible ‘viewpoint bias’

The right to free speech is a cherished cultural ideal in the US, enshrined prominently in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

But the war in Gaza — and the protest movement it has inspired — has brought to the fore questions of where that freedom ends. Student protesters have taken aim at their schools’ ties to Israel, and even at the US government for its continued material and political support for the war.

How those protests are unfolding on college campuses has proven particularly thorny. Several high-profile administrators have argued that certain students, particularly those of Israeli and Jewish backgrounds, may feel targeted by the anti-war protests. They maintained dismantling the encampments is essential to creating a safe learning environment.

But some students, faculty and advocates say the attempts to dismantle the camps reveal biases about whose voices are prioritised on campus — and whose are blocked.

Alex Morey, the vice president of campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individuals Rights and Expression (FIRE), said a swift policy change like the one enacted at Indiana University — in an apparent response to a particular protest — “raises all the red flags and screams viewpoint discrimination”.

She told Al Jazeera that FIRE is currently monitoring about 10 instances of schools shifting their policies since the war started in a way that may be discriminatory.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also voiced concerns about the Indiana University policy change in the aftermath of last week’s arrests.

The president of the state ACLU chapter, Chris Daley, called it “alarming” that decades-old “policy would be specifically changed on the morning of, and in response to, a planned protest against the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians”.

At least 34,568 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and rights groups have said the Palestinian enclave is on the verge of famine, as Israel’s siege approaches its ninth month.

Violent arrests

How administrators choose to respond to protests and cases of civil disobedience — defined as nonviolent acts where a law or policy is intentionally broken — can have wide-ranging implications.

Images of violent arrests have become common since the latest surge in university protests and encampments began. To date, more than 1,000 arrests have been recorded across 25 US campuses, according to CNN.

Columbia University in New York City is often understood as the epicentre for the current encampment movement: Its students started erecting tents on April 17, as part of a campaign to push the school to divest from Israel.

But the university’s reaction has set the tone for crackdowns across the country. The next day, Columbia called in the New York Police Department (NYPD), arresting more than 100 protesters.

Critics said the decision escalated an already tense situation. Arrests have since continued, with more than 282 additional students detained at Columbia and the City College of New York by Wednesday morning.

Scenes of police violence against faculty members and students at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the University of Texas at Austin have stoked further anger.

The Austin campus is a state school — and critics have pointed out that restrictions of free speech there could teeter into government censorship.

Nevertheless, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a self-styled free speech crusader and prominent Republican, decided to send state troopers onto the University of Texas campus on April 24, resulting in more than 50 arrests.

Morey at FIRE noted that Abbott issued an executive order in March requiring universities to update their free speech policies to respond to what he characterised as “the sharp rise in anti-Semitic speech and acts on university campuses”.

That, she said, could be seen as another example of “viewpoint discrimination” — favouring one point of view over another. Even right-wing libertarians have denounced the decision as a form of hypocrisy.

Former Congressman Justin Amash, for instance, wrote on the social media platform X: “If [Abbott’s] arresting them for their speech, then he’s violating the law, and his actions threaten everyone in the state, including everyone he claims to be protecting.”

The police have also been wary of violent crackdowns on the largely peaceful protesters.

In one particularly striking instance, The Washington Post reported that the Metropolitan Police in Washington, DC, refused a request from George Washington University to clear a protest encampment at the school.

A police official noted earlier this week that the protest “activity has remained peaceful”.

Rights on campuses

The US Constitution provides sweeping protections for political speech. That includes language that may be considered hate speech, as that label can potentially be used to stifle controversial or opposing views.

The constitutional protections are so broad they can include discussions or even the advocacy of violence. However, the Constitution does not protect speech that crosses the line into “true threats” of violence or incitement.

Students at state universities are automatically afforded these protections. By contrast, students at private universities typically enter into a contract with administrators upon enrolling that outlines what speech will be acceptable.

Still, civil liberties groups have argued that private institutions should inherently respect freedom of speech and expression. For instance, in an April 26 letter to campus presidents, ACLU officials wrote that “academic freedom and free inquiry require that similar [free speech] principles guide private universities”.

US and Israel genocide of Palestinians 2024
CAMPUS
33 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Dunn Meadow encampment Thursday

📷IU professor Benjamin Robinson stands between armed police officers and a line of pro-Palestinian protesters linking arms April 25, 2024, at Dunn… pic.twitter.com/1HBMc6B00r

— Pierre F. Lherisson (@P_F_Lherisson_) April 28, 2024

But universities must balance free speech concerns with student safety and the right to access education. Some groups have accused pro-Palestine protesters of being broadly anti-Semitic.

Protest organisers, however, have rejected that claim, saying it conflates criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. They have, in turn, accused administrators and outside forces, including influential donors, of seizing on isolated incidents of violence and harassment to justify stifling their free speech rights.

“Under the First Amendment, we say that we’re only going to stop speech that falls into narrow categories like a true threat or incitement or discriminatory harassment,” FIRE’s Morey explained. “That is not somebody shouting ‘intifada’ or ‘from the river to the sea’ at a peaceful protest.”

However, she added, the Supreme Court established a specific standard for discriminatory harassment in an educational context.

She explained that the court defines it “as unwelcome conduct that can include speech that’s so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive, it creates a pattern of conduct that prohibits the victim or student of getting an educational opportunity or benefit”.

Even at universities where students are guaranteed their First Amendment rights, administrators can impose “time, place and manner restrictions” on protests to ensure that the school can continue to function, according to Tom Ginsburg, a law professor and faculty director for the University of Chicago’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

“These restrictions have to be, in my view, reasonably accommodative of student speech,” Ginsburg said. “Then the second issue is: Are they being applied neutrally? And this is a place where administrators have to be very careful.”

How administrators respond is often subject to the influence of political tailwinds, Ginsburg added.

In the US, for instance, support for Israel is seen as sacrosanct among many Washington politicians. That, in turn, renders any questioning of Israel’s war in Gaza potentially a political third rail.

“Congress has come in and treated the issue like a political football,” Ginsburg told Al Jazeera. “And that’s always bad from the point of view of higher education.”

Since December, a Republican-led committee in the House of Representatives has called the presidents of four high-profile private universities to appear for public questioning over allegations of anti-Semitism on campus.

Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik was among them. On April 17, she defended herself before the committee, though critics accused her of obsequiousness before the lawmakers. The crackdown on her campus’s protesters occurred shortly after her appearance.

“When legislators get involved, they can distort the responses [of administrators],” Ginsburg told Al Jazeera. “I think this might be part of the Columbia story: The president was thinking about her testimony before Congress instead of her own campus culture.”

‘Insist on our basic rights’

At Indiana University, a state school, outrage has continued to grow over the administration’s abrupt policy change to the Dunn Meadow protests.

In a letter, the president of the school’s faculty, Colin Johnson, called on university President Pamela Whitten to step down. Local officials and other faculty groups have also condemned the new protest restrictions.

In a tweet, Steve Sanders, a professor at the university’s law school, said it was “difficult to argue the policy [change] was viewpoint-neutral, as the First Amendment requires”.

For her part, Whitten defended the policy switch in a statement to faculty obtained by the publication Inside Higher Ed. She noted the changes were posted online and at Dunn Meadow before arrests were made.

“Participants were told repeatedly that they were free to stay and protest, but that any tent would need to be dismantled,” she wrote. She also cited the risk of “external participants” joining the camp.

But Robinson, the Germanic studies professor arrested at the meadow, said a higher ideal was at stake in the policy change. Photos of his arrest show him standing between police and students, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, “Jews say ceasefire now.”

“We tried to show that we were determined to insist on our basic rights,” he told Al Jazeera after his release.

Now it’s time to briefly discuss the Hoosier defense. Same as the offense, not a ton is known about how the Indiana Hoosiers will stack up defensively this year. With attrition and coaching changes, there’s so many question marks I can’t possible forecast with any certainty how it will go. Which isn’t much fun, but here’s some things to learn and watch this offseason.

Bryant Haines

Bryant Haines is the new defensive coordinator for Indiana. Haines comes to us from James Madison University and has been with Curt Cignetti since the Elon days. Officially taking over solo defensive coordinator for JMU in 2022, Haines has been at least co-dc since 2019.

A lot of faith has been placed in Haines. Cignetti described his influence on the defense as way more limited than his influence on the offense. For that reason, and I assume because Cignetti has a lot of faith in Haines, Bryant Haines is Indiana’s first million dollar coordinator in program history. Haines is scheduled to make $1.025 million prior to incentive bonuses. Will it help turn around the smelly turd that has been IU’s defense in the last few years? We’ll see.

Depth

To put it simply, there’s a ton of depth concerns on the defense. With the number of outgoing transfers and graduations coupled with the limited number of incoming transfers, it’s difficult to really even squint and see positive momentum on that side of the ball. Will it get better eventually? Maybe. But if Indiana isn’t able to really coach up some of the bench players that have stayed, they could be in real trouble.

Defensive Line and Pressure

Indiana isn’t exactly known for having many guys that can consistently pressure the opposing QB. They also aren’t known for having big dudes in the trenches and making it hard to run. That’s a majority of the reason that Indiana has struggled on defense since the beginning of time. Even the couple years under Kane Wommack, the defense relied on pressure from corners, safeties, and linebackers. It’s incredibly rare that Indiana actually gets a D-line to pressure QB’s at all. In fact, as a team in 2023 and in 2022, Indiana only recorded 20 total sacks. That’s good for 10^th in 2022 and last in 2023. If Indiana is able to get their lines to compete and pressure QB’s they can find some success. If not, I think it’s going to be shootout city for this program this season.

Returning and Transferring Players of Note

Transfers

Jayden McDonald – LB – Troy

Terry Jones – S – Old Dominion

Shawn Asbury II – S – Old Dominion

Jailin Walker – LB – James Madison (JMU)

James Carpenter – DL – JMU

Aiden Fisher – LB – JMU

Mikail Kamara – DL – JMU

Cedarius Doss – CB – Austin Peay

Now we turn to questions for our panel of “writers:”

1) Indiana was supposedly a defensive school for the last three years, but gave up on average 394 YPG in 2023, 449 YPG in 2022, and 384 in 2021. That ranks dead last in YPG in 2023 and 2022 in the B1G. If Indiana is able to simply have a middle of the road defensive scheme, do fancy Indiana’s chances to get to a bowl?

2) If you’re putting your child/nephew/niece down for the night, what’s your go-to book to read them?

Jesse: At first I thought, “surely Indiana’s defense suffered from being on the field a lot and that’s why they give up so many YPG.” But uh… the underlying don’t look much better with YPP, Rushing YPG, and passing YPG all near the bottom of the conference. Getting a new defensive coordinator can change everything, though. As a Nebraska fan who saw what Pelini did, and then didn’t, and then did again AND even looking at the world of difference Tony White did in a year, it’s possible to have a turnaround.

That said, do I think it ups the odds? I dunno. Middle of the road doesn’t fix all the woes of previous regimes and they usually come out at the worst times. It’s a step in the right direction for sure, but there are a lot of fundamental flaws to fix here.

As for go-to book? Currently all-in on Mo Willems books in general. Been a big fan of Gerald and Piggie lately with “A Big Guy Took My Ball” getting a good chuckle each time from me.

Kind of…: It’s the B1G. “Middle of the road” is still a big ask. If Indiana were in the Big 12 and was middle of the road on defense, then we’re talking 8-4 or something. But, no, I see Indiana losing glorious shootouts more easily that suddenly looking stout-ish on D. But I could be wrong. And so could anybody else. Because we live in Portal World now and nobody knows shit. (I do like Indiana’s overall future compared to the last three years.)

AlmaOtter: Hard to really project out with a brand-new staff and roster, but I’ll optimistically say that regression to the mean gives the Hoosiers a slight boost? Don’t think that a bowl in year 1 is impossible, but I’d take the under. 5-7 seems fair.

When I was in Milwaukee last month, I did read a lot of books to my nephew, but they never really put him to sleep. That kid does not want to go down for naps at all. That said, I did get my buddy/OTE commenter Verdauga a copy of the Knight Owl for his son’s birthday and that’s apparently been a hit!

Do you have any thoughts on Indiana’s defense other than “bad”? Let us know down below!

The Milwaukee Bucks weren’t ready for their season to end.

The drastically short-handed team, playing once again without stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, got contributions from up and down the roster in a dominating 115-92 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 5 on Tuesday at Fiserv Forum that cut the Pacers’ series lead to 3-2.

Game 6 is on Thursday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

“I believed in them anyway,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “I said that after the game last game.

“This team, they’re giving it to me. They’re doing everything. They really are. They’re playing together. They know we’re down men. They know we have to do it together. No one is trying to be the hero.”

Khris Middleton starts hot in first quarter

If there has been a hero for the Bucks this series it has been Khris Middleton. He has been carrying the Bucks’ offense with the absences of Lillard and Antetokounmpo, even with Middleton suffering injuries to both ankles in recent games. He came into Game 5 averaging 26.3 points for the series.

He started strong by scoring 10 of the Bucks’ first 14 points.

The Pacers were also hot in the first quarter after knocking down 21 three-pointers in Game 4. They made seven from long distance to take a 31-23 advantage after the first 12 minutes.

Middleton battled some foul trouble in the second half but finished with 29 points and 12 rebounds.

“He’s been battling stuff all year,” Bucks guard Malik Beasley said. “The fact that he came back last game even though he got hurt, came back in the game. Played his ass off.

“To do what he did tonight, he’s our leader right now. Especially with those two guys out, he’s helping us a lot.”

Pat Beverley stands out as instigator

Bucks head coach Doc Rivers likes to call veteran guard Pat Beverley an “instigator.”

Beverley was that in every sense of the word in the second quarter.

He scored 12 points in the quarter as Milwaukee took a 53-48 lead into the break.

Beverley also handed out 10 assists.

“His scoring was good, but I thought his playmaking was unbelieveable tonight,” Rivers said.

Beverley also drew a technical foul on the Pacers’ Obi Toppin by trying to grab the ball out of Toppin’s hands. Toppin took exception and shoved Beverley into the Bucks’ bench. Toppin was given the technical after a video review by the referees.

Bobby Portis helps Bucks take control in third quarter

The Bucks took control of the game in the third quarter, starting with a 9-0 run.

The Pacers started cutting into the lead, getting within 66-57 on a layup by Andrew Nembhard.

But Bobby Portis, who was ejected in the first quarter of Game 4, pushed the lead back to 72-57 when Bobby Portis knocked in a layup and then fired up the crowd after Indiana called a timeout.

“Bobby, he knows how important he is to this team,” Beasley said. “Today before the shootaround he apologized (for the ejection). We need him out there.

“He’s a beast. He makes plays. He gives us energy. We need everybody.”

The Fiserv Forum crowd really ignited when Beasley knocked down back-to-back three-pointers for a 82-63 lead.

Malik Beasley among the standout contributors

Pat Connaughton blocked a three-point attempt by the Pacers’ Aaron Nesmith at the third-quarte buzzer.

That was among the standout moments by players who made the most of their opportunities for the Bucks.

Danilo Gallinari played 20 minutes and pulled down six rebounds. The 35-year-old did not play in the first three games of the series.

“It’s honestly not easy, I’ve never been in this situation before,” Gallinari said. “I’ve always been a guy that played 30-plus minutes and even when I started coming off the bench in Atlanta, I played a lot of minutes.

“It’s pretty new for me. This is something you learn how to do it. It’s all mental. The body, you work every day to get the body ready but the mental part, it’s such a mental game.”

Beasley also had a strong game, scoring all 18 of his points in the second half.

“He needs to see the ball go in,” Rivers said. “I need to see the ball go in, too, for him.”

He played big minutes in the third quarter when Middleton picked up his fourth foul, with Beasley guarding the Pacers’ Pascal Siakam.

“Today, we made sure we were scrambling and helping each other,” Beasley said. “I ended up being on him a few times, but my teammates had my back.

And the Bucks stayed alive to see another game.

“I just saw something that we’re the first team to win (in the playoffs) without our top two scorers (from the regular season),” Beasley said. “That just shows how deep we are as a team.

“No matter how many guys we got out. No matter foul trouble or not. Hurt or not. We got to be prepared. It’s the playoffs, we got to do whatever we can to win.”

Five numbers

79 — Career playoff starts for Khris Middleton, tying him with Giannis Antetokounmpo for first on the Bucks all-time playoffs games started list.

4 — Games with at least 20 points for Middleton in the series.

6 — Technical fouls called on the Pacers in the series.

2 for 10 — A.J. Green’s three-point shooting in the series.

8 — Made three-pointers for Malik Beasley over the last two games