Ali v. Board of Trustees of Indiana University

Summary

On June 26, 2026, Sabina Ali, a doctoral student in Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington pursuing a minor in Jewish Studies, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana against Indiana University officials, alleging that they violated her First Amendment rights and the university’s promises to protect freedom of expression and academic freedom. Ali is represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Legal Defense Fund. The lawsuit concerns allegations that the university removed Ali from an academic workshop because of a “Free Palestine” image on her Zoom account and later denied her university funding to attend an academic conference.

On September 19, 2025, Ali attended a Borns Jewish Studies Program workshop virtually with her camera off and a Zoom profile picture showing a woman wearing a keffiyeh in front of a Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine.” According to the complaint, Interim Program Director Günther Jikeli told Ali that the workshop would not begin unless she turned on her camera or removed the image. When she declined, he removed her from the meeting. The complaint states that Jikeli later emailed faculty and students describing the image as a “Palestinian terrorist” and saying that “[p]olitical slogans or provocative images of any kind have no place in our academic settings.”

On October 3, 2025, Jikeli denied Ali’s request for $1,200 in university funding to attend the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in Boston, where she was scheduled to present research related to her dissertation. The complaint states that a faculty committee had unanimously approved the request, but Jikeli denied the funding without giving a reason. Ali alleges that the decision was punishment for her September 19 expression and was related to the views expressed in her scholarship about Zionism and Palestine. She later filed a complaint with Indiana University’s Office of Civil Rights Compliance, which denied it on October 23.

On October 29, 2025, College of Arts and Sciences Executive Dean Rick Van Kooten told faculty that he agreed with the funding decision but recommended that future funding denials by the program director include a reason and allow for an appeal. On November 19, Van Kooten told Ali that, generally, student attire, Zoom backgrounds, and similar forms of expression were not considered disruptive enough to restrict, and that simply creating a “hostile environment” was not enough to limit First Amendment rights. He also said that Jikeli’s September 19 actions were inconsistent with that interpretation of university policy. Ali’s lawsuit claims that the university retaliated against her and treated her differently because of her views, and that it failed to honor its commitments to protect student expression and academic freedom. She seeks court orders preventing similar actions in the future, as well as damages.