Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a controversial figure on IU’s campus, is scheduled to speak at the university on Friday, September 23 at 6:30 pm. The event, titled, “Protecting Individual Liberty,” will take place in the Whittenberger Auditorium and will center around Rokita’s “efforts to preserve liberty in the Hoosier state and the importance of protecting our Constitutional rights and freedoms,” according to the event description.
The attorney general will also address “the dangers of federal overreach; the necessity of preserving second amendment liberties; and the importance of two-parent families, protecting the unborn, and other traditional moral institutions.” All of these are topics Rokita has championed during his tenure as Indiana’s attorney general, a position he has held since 2021.
Rokita will speak on other issues his office has taken on as well, including “his efforts to bolster parents’ control of their children’s education” and combat “the postmodern and neo-marxist tendencies now taking hold in public universities and schools.” The attorney general has been particularly vocal on this topic and launched his “Parents’ Bill of Rights” campaign, described as a “roadmap for Hoosier parents and caregivers to exercise their legal right to direct their children’s education,” specifically to target it.
Attendees will also have an opportunity to ask Rokita questions on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from “the topics of the event” to “his extensive life as a public figure.”
Interested students, faculty, and community members can register for the event at this link.
A spokesperson for the ISI Buckley Society told The Crimson Post that the group is “extremely excited to host such as fierce and accomplished conservative fighter.”
“Attorney General Rokita has had a profound impact not only in the state of Indiana but on the national stage as well. He has proven himself to be an effective advocate of Constitutional rights, civil liberties, and freedom rightly understood. Mr. Rokita has shown a consistent concern for the personal liberties of Hoosiers and has implemented policy to ensure those liberties are preserved,” the spokesperson continued.
“With the increasing rarity of these values in American colleges and universities, it is all the more imperative to bring speakers such as Mr. Rokita to campuses to ensure students are being offered varied and opposing ideas and opinions,” the spokesperson concluded.
Not everyone on campus is quite so pleased with the Attorney General’s scheduled appearance. Numerous faculty members and students have voiced their opposition to the event. Much of the criticism centers around comments made by Rokita concerning IU faculty member and abortion advocate Dr. Caitlin Bernard. Rokita questioned the legality of some of Bernard’s practices after she performed an abortion in Ohio on a 10-year-old rape victim. The IU Graduate and Professional Student Government President, Chelsea Brinda, decried Rokita’s statements as “vitriol and abuse.”