by Leo Morris “Indiana” has to go, so we’ll need to come up with a new name for the state. That’s not an outrageous statement. It can be logically inferred from remarks by Gov. Eric Holcomb. At a recent press conference, a reporter hit the governor with a question that went something like: In light of recent debates over changing the names of sports teams and other entities with designations of Native American origin, do…

WE WOULD LIKE to know more about the thinking at Indiana University and Purdue regarding students from China. Specifically, how it was decided to bring so many of one group of foreign student to campus in the first place. But nobody is answering what might be called “the China question.” There is the money, of course. The one million international students currently enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities contributed nearly $41 billion to the economy, says the Association of International…

OUR SYMPATHY GOES OUT to the dozen or so of you who were counting on Eric Holcomb to stand strong against the culture-cancelers and statue-topplers. Here is the governor responding to a question yesterday on changing the name “Indiana”: “You know, I haven’t given that any thought, although I’ve talked with Native American friends of mine about our shared past, our heritage, and how we can do a better job — we being myself, this administration — sharing…

(Editor’s Note: We are reposting Mark Frank’s essay on Seattle as the winner of this quarter’s Prescience Trophy.) by Mark Franke “If we could only be more like Seattle . . .” How often have you heard that comment from city leaders, Chamber of commerce spokesmen and other economic development officials? They conjure up images of highly paid millennials living in expensive downtown condos and freely spending their disposable income at all sorts of retail establishments.…

by Andrew Horning My first job in healthcare was in the arbovirus surveillance unit of the Indiana Board of Health in the mid 1970s. My job was all about the flaviviruses carried by birds and mosquitos. As a young man thus indoctrinated in the hemorrhagic syndromes, fatal mucosal disease, birth defects and encephalitis caused by such viruses, I became one of the many with serious concerns about humanity’s preparedness for pandemics. We really could all…

by Leo Morris I’d like to confess something I feel guilty about. It happened a long time ago, back in high school. One of my classmates – I won’t give his name or even a pseudonym, for obvious reasons – was a gangly, pimply wreck of a teenager. His walk was a shambling lurch, his speech a jumbled garble, his dress grotesquely scruffy. He was the odd one of our class, the goofy one who…

MARGARET MENGE, an alumnus of Indiana University, has filed a complaint against the university in Monroe County Circuit Court alleging violation of the state public records law. Menge, a freelance journalist, is researching the policy of state universities regarding students from China. According to the complaint, the university denied Menge’s request for emails unless her formal request stated both the sender and recipient. This, she argues, violates the letter and spirit of the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, Indiana Code 5-14-3). Menge quotes…

STATE OF INDIANA In the Monroe Superior Court, July 2, 2020 MARGARET MENGE, Plaintiff, v. INDIANA UNIVERSITY and IU BOARD OF TRUSTEES, Defendant. COMPLAINT Margaret Menge is filing this complaint against Indiana University for its violation of the Indiana Access to Public Records Law. She is seeking declaratory relief. She states and alleges the following: She is a professional journalist working in the state of Indiana and also an adjunct scholar with the Indiana Policy…

Solipsism, the late Charles Krauthammer liked to say, is the belief that the whole world operates pretty much like suburban Boston, his euphemism for any place in America where self-satisfaction and shallow thinking rule. Indiana has a bad case of self-satisfaction and shallow thinking, particularly in the governor’s office in Indianapolis and with the trustees at Indiana University. Neither has demonstrated due diligence in distinguishing between a person of Chinese ancestry and an agent for a self-interested or…

BEGINNING WITH the Coronavirus outbreak here, Margaret Menge, an adjunct scholar for the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, began researching the policy of her alma matter on students from China.  She learned that in the 2019-2020 academic year, students from China paid just over $80 million to IU-Bloomington in tuition and fees alone. This is close to half the total amount of funding that IU Bloomington gets from the state of Indiana each year, which is around…