Indiana professor loses job after showing slide linking MAGA to covert white supremacy

The firing has become a flashpoint in debates over Indiana’s “intellectual diversity” law and classroom speech.

Jessica Adams, an Indiana University social work lecturer has lost her job after showing a widely used academic graphic in class that listed the “Make America Great Again” slogan as an example of covert white supremacy, triggering a complaint that went from a student to a U.S. senator’s office before landing on the university’s desk.

The firing marks one of the most visible test cases of Indiana’s 2024 “intellectual diversity” law, Senate Enrolled Act 202, which allows students to report faculty they believe are not fostering “free inquiry, free expression and intellectual diversity.” As theGrio reported on Trump’s DEI rollbacks dismantling public health infrastructure, civil rights advocates have warned the administration’s anti-DEI agenda is reshaping institutions well beyond the federal government. TheGrio has also covered how Texas’s DEI ban reshaped university campuses after more than 100 job cuts followed its enactment. According to the New York Times and Indiana Capital Chronicle, Adams was teaching a graduate seminar called “Diversity, Human Rights and Social Justice” when the incident occurred in September 2025.

The graphic Adams showed, the “Pyramid of White Supremacy” created by the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, categorizes racist behaviors from overt acts like hate crimes and lynching at the top to covert, “socially acceptable” forms at the base. MAGA appears among the covert examples, alongside red-lining, racial micro-aggressions, and the celebration of Columbus Day. A student in the class did not file a complaint through IU’s internal process. Instead, she contacted Republican Sen. Jim Banks, an ally of President Trump, who forwarded the complaint to the School of Social Work dean. An internal investigation followed and Adams was removed from the class. When she returned in January 2026, university observers were placed in her sessions to monitor compliance with SEA 202.

The firing was formalized in a May 22 letter from Chancellor Latha Ramchand stating her contract would not be renewed. An improvement plan issued beforehand cited offenses unrelated to the MAGA graphic, including time management and course organization. Adams says she felt “very tricked” after the dean she believed was supporting her used her own slides as evidence against her in the review.

“I felt like she was on my team. I wouldn’t have just offered my materials to her if I had known she planned to use them against me,” Adams said. She is appealing both the initial sanction and the non-renewal decision, backed by civil liberties groups.

The American Association of University Professors has criticized IU’s handling of the case, and the international academic advocacy group Scholars at Risk noted that the same administrator who initiated the complaint served as a “content expert” during the investigation, a conflict of interest the group says tainted the process. Adams’s case has become a flashpoint for critics who say SEA 202 is chilling classroom debate on race and inequality at Indiana’s public universities.