21st century
In March 2014, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights initiated a federal investigation of Indiana University's Title IX compliance, encompassing more than 450 sexual harassment and violence complaints filed with the university between 2011 and 2015. The complaints involved both students and university staff or faculty. The investigation revealed concerns with timeliness of response, lack of documentation, not preventing retaliation, and the creation of sexually hostile environments at the campus. The investigation further criticized the lack of mandatory sexual harassment, misconduct, and awareness training for staff, as well as the lack of institutional support for its Title IX Coordinator to oversee compliance by the university.
In February 2016, the university's Associate Dean of Students, Director of Student Ethics, and Title IX Deputy Director, Jason Casares, abruptly resigned his position after sexual assault allegations were made against him by Association for Student Conduct Administration president-elect, and New York University Assistant Director of Global Community Standards, Jill Creighton, during a conference in Fort Worth, Texas in December 2015. The Fort Worth Police Department declined to press charges.
In May 2016, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights initiated another Title IX investigation into Indiana University for failing to hold a university student accountable for an off-campus rape of another student and failing to follow proper Title IX procedures subsequent to the reporting of the incident. The university also charged the victim a dorm-relocation fee after the suspected rapist continued to harass the victim around her dormitory, which also went without intervention by the university. The victim's case was also handled by former Title IX Director Jason Casares, prior to his resignation amid sexual harassment and misconduct allegations as the university's student ethics director and Title IX deputy director.
In November 2023, Indiana University Student Government treasurer Alex Kaswan and co-director of DEI Makiah Pickett resigned after accusing other student government leadership members of antisemitism and failure to represent the cultural whole of the student body. After learning of the accusations and resignations, U.S. Representative Jim Banks sent a letter to university president Pamela Whitten denouncing such conduct, identifying it as a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and threatened the continued federal funding for the university if the conduct was tolerated by the university administration. Accused student body president Aaliyah Raji responded by denouncing both Islamophobia and antisemitism and stating that the student government combats against those issues.
Also in November 2023, the university attracted national attention when the university barred a faculty member from teaching after alleging that he improperly assisted the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a student group, in reserving a space on campus. Shortly thereafter, the university's administrators also cancelled a planned art exhibition by Samia Halaby, a Palestinian-American artist. Both of these events occurred after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and in the wake of national attention on antisemitism on college and university campuses. They also occurred in the midst of changes to Indiana laws that some perceived as attacking academic freedom. In the spring of 2024, the university's faculty voted no confidence in the Indiana University system president, the Bloomington campus's provost and executive vice president, and the Bloomington campus's vice provost for faculty and academic affairs.
In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights again initiated a federal investigation of the university in response to a complaint of the violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The complaint was filed by Dr. Zachary Marschall and alleged lack of response and complacency by the university administration to an increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents at the campus. The complaint also led to additional federal investigations at the University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University, and the office is also conducting parallel investigations of Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and others.
In 2025, the Indiana General Assembly passed a state budget bill mandating that Indiana's public universities phase out programs that produce fewer than 10 students in an associate degree program, 15 students in a bachelor's degree program, 7 students in a master's degree program, and 3 students in a doctorate degree program, unless the institution received permission from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education to continue offering the program. As a result, the university ended over a hundred programs, including:
Bachelor's degree: Art History, American Studies, Atmospheric Science, Comparative Literature, Dance, Earth Science, Geography, East Asian Studies, Gender Studies, German Studies, Music/Ballet, Religious Studies, Statistics, and numerous foreign languages
Master's degree: African Studies, Comparative Literature, Communications and Culture, Journalism, Latin American Studies, Statistics, Theatre and Drama, and numerous foreign languages
PhD: African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Art History, Astrophysics, Chemical Physics, Classical Studies, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Public Policy, Theatre and Drama, and numerous foreign languages
Significant cuts were made to the university's programs in foreign languages, due to their low enrollment numbers. This occurred even though many of these programs were privately funded, such as the program in Mongolian studies. In response, students and faculty have launched a petition calling for the restoration of language programs.
In October 2025, the university came under fire when administrators instructed the Indiana Daily Student to refrain from printing news stories in its homecoming edition, leading student media director Jim Rodenbush to refuse what he described as censorship. The university terminated Rodenbush and announced the discontinuation of all print editions of the IDS, citing financial and strategic considerations, a justification contested by student editors and press-freedom advocates. Rodenbush subsequently filed a federal lawsuit alleging First Amendment retaliation. The university later permitted limited print publication through June 2026, while maintaining it had not intended to censor content.
