A Customs and Border Patrol career fair shared on Indiana University’s events calendar provoked a vote from professors Tuesday who say they’re appalled by the listing.
The Bloomington Faculty Council passed a resolution calling on IU to remove ICE, the CBP and Department of Homeland Security as approved employers for the calendar.
The council objected to the university associating with immigration enforcement agencies. Its resolution cites recent killings by CBP and ICE agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere and what it said are infringements on constitutional rights.
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Sarah Phillips, professor of anthropology, introduced the resolution.
“The university is not legally required nor ethically compelled to provide such a recruitment platform to attract Indiana University students into agencies with a documented record of violence, civil rights concerns, constitutional violations and ongoing litigation,” she said.
The vote passed with 42 yes, 10 no and 6 abstaining. Unlike most BFC resolutions, the votes were cast secretly on paper ballots.
A state law passed last year stripped the faculty council of its authority, so the resolution is advisory only.
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Council Secretary Travis O’Brien added that while no faculty he polled ahead of the vote approved of ICE activities, there were a “complex range of opinions” on the resolution itself. He read a statement he said had been shared by a no-vote professor.
“While I understand the resolution as a protest against the horrible, seemingly illegal and certainly inhumane things that ICE is doing, the best way to change ICE is for it to have employees who can think,” O’Brien quoted. “That is our students, if we have done our jobs.”
The DHS shared the career fair on Handshake, an online job board that caters to universities.
IU has said that it doesn’t control which Handshake events appear on its calendar, but that was disputed by a former official in the IU Career Development Center who told the Indiana Daily Student that all postings have to be approved within the university.
The expo, scheduled for Feb. 18, advertises “mission-critical positions” such as border patrol agent and customs and border protection officer.
Besides CBP, the post says other unspecified Department of Homeland Security agencies will be represented. That umbrella includes ICE.
The event has been shared on job boards and by universities outside of IU.
