'Anti-American': Bloomington multi-faith group blasts IU leaders over protest response

Editor's note: This post was updated to correct that the organizer of the event is not part of the Bloomington Multi-faith Alliance.

Members of multiple faith groups in Bloomington walked from the Sample Gates to Dunn Meadow Tuesday morning to provide support for students who have been protesting against the Israel-Hamas war since Thursday.

Members of multiple faiths set up a tent, played music, held signs with messages including “War is not the answer,” talked to student protesters and provided them with outlets for their hopes and frustrations.

“We have people standing by just to provide some care, whether that's just human-to-human compassion and care, pastoral care, mom hugs, dad hugs, fist bumps, affirmations,” said organizer April Hennessey.

Members of the Multi-faith Alliance set up a tent and offered activities such as dissolvable paper on which students could write their fears, which they then symbolically dissolved in water.

Hennessey said as students are setting up for a longer-term encampment, they have, despite their resoluteness, become tired, and the multi-faith coalition simply wanted to support them.

Mohamed Sayed, an imam at the Islamic Center of Bloomington, which he said represents more than 600 people, said the alliance, through its presence, is showing broad community support of the student’s right to freedom of speech and assembly. At the same time, he said, the alliance is rejecting the Indiana University administration’s decision to send in armed police.

Students, faculty and others have protested on Dunn Meadow since Thursday. Indiana State Police arrested more than 50 protesters one two separate days. On the eve of the initial protest, IU’s administration changed a decades-old policy regarding structures, such as tents, on Dunn Meadow, an action that three lawyers said likely violated the protesters’ constitutional rights.

Hennessey and some members of the Multi-faith Alliance on Tuesday sharply criticized the university administration’s choices.

Hennessey, who organized the multi-faith group but is not a member of the Bloomington Multi-faith Alliance, said IU President Pamela Whitten’s “militarization of this university has been a disgrace,” Hennessey. “It’s a blight on the history … of this organization.”

Frank Young, a Quaker, said, “We’re all pretty aghast at what’s been happening.”

“What the state police did was basically to violate their oath of office,” he said. “They’re charged with protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States. What they were doing here was absolutely the opposite. They were violating people’s rights to peaceably assemble.”

Whitten and IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav said in a statement that they brought in the ISP because of the "expectation of a high number of external participants." The majority of people arrested were Bloomington residents.

IU has not made Whitten or Shrivastav available for an interview despite repeated requests.

Young, who has lived in Bloomington since 1949, said he has deep ties to the community and the university, and views the administration’s recent actions as a betrayal of the spirit of learning.

“My friend and mentor Herman Wells is surely turning over in his grave,” he said.

Wells was the university’s 11th president and first chancellor.

“When someone translates their opinion into the right of violence, that is wrong,” Young said. “And unfortunately, this is what the president of the university decided to do.

“I think it’s anti-American,” he said. “And I think she should be ashamed of having knuckled under to whatever pressure she was put under.”

IU Palestine Solidarity Committee President Aidan Khamis, who sat in a chair next to Dunn Meadow — because he has been barred from it — said the outreach from the multi-faith community showed the broad support students have in Bloomington.

“Although this is organized from a student perspective, it really transcends … the students,” he said.

Anne Kavalerchik, who represents Jewish Voice for Peace, and is a graduate student and organizer with Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition, agrees.

While the university’s administrators have unleashed “unforgivable violence” on students, she said, members of the community, from within and without the university “have really stepped up to protect these students in their fight.”

Tim Jessen, a retired Presbyterian minister and former religion columnist for The Herald-Times, criticized especially the Indiana State Police decision to place snipers on the Indiana Memorial Union tower overlooking Dunn Meadow as “drastic and unwarranted.”

“I think our nation and our world is broken and the situation here illustrates the brokenness, even here on this campus community,” he said. “And I’m here to witness for reconciliation and for peacemaking.”

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.