A one-time voluntary retirement program that prohibited employees from defaming, disparaging or making negative statements about Indiana University will end in May 2026, according to an IU spokesperson.
The program gave IU Bloomington faculty a year of their regular salary if they retired on either May 31, 2025, or Dec. 31, 2025. The incentive program was launched in August 2024 to a targeted group of faculty and rolled out in phases across IU’s campuses, but will finish at the end of this spring semester.
Emeritus philosophy professor Marcia Baron accepted the program and told the Indiana Daily Student in an email she asked human resources, professors in the law school and a retired administrator about the wording of the retirement contract before signing it.
“Employee shall not defame, or otherwise disparage, the University or any of its successors, divisions, or affiliates, or any of their respective current or former trustees, officers, employees, agents, representatives, attorneys, or insurers, in their representative as well as their individual capacities,” the contract read.
Employees would agree to “not to make negative statements of any kind regarding the University,” it went on to say.
IU spokesperson Mark Bode told the Indiana Daily Student in an email the language in the contracts was “standard for separation agreements with payouts at Indiana University.”
Baron said human resources told her the requirement was not unusual, but others she spoke to disagreed.
Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, a professor of labor and employment law at IU, said several people called him about the program.
“I basically told them that this was unusual for public employers,” Dau-Schmidt said. “I had not seen it before, except for maybe in cases where they had someone who actually had been charged with something and disciplined, and that’s why they were leaving or retiring.”
Dau-Schmidt said disparagement agreements are becoming more common in the private sector. However, public employees have First Amendment rights to speak as private citizens on matters of public interest, he said.
The university also cannot ask employees to waive their whistleblowing rights, he said.
The only legitimate basis the university could ask employees to waive their First Amendment rights on would be disparagement of IU personnel or programs the public has no interest in knowing, and if the interests of the university outweigh the public’s interest, Dau-Schmidt said. So, the provisions are largely unenforceable.
He hypothesized a few reasons why the clause was included — some of IU’s general counsel previously practiced in the private sector, for one.
“Sometimes employers will ask employees to sign things that are not enforceable, just because they know that most people won't figure out that they're not enforceable, or they'll be afraid,” Dau-Schmidt said.
To his knowledge, he said, no one had been punished for breaking the clause. Bode did not directly address if the disparagement clause had been enforced when asked.
