The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library knows a thing or two about the controversy surrounding censorship. Vonnegut has found his novels on the banned books list repeatedly and, last year, writer Corey Michael Dalton spent Banned Books Week imprisoned within a jail cell made out of banned books at the Library. The Library was also proud to have author Howard Zinn, an American academic historian, author, playwright, and social activist who died in 2010, serve as honorary member of their board of directors. It was this relationship that was very much heartfelt when Zinn posthumously found himself at the center of a fanatical political agenda by former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who was entrusted to promote academic freedom when he became president of Purdue University last January. Instead, he has used his connections to crush his political opponents with an iron fist in his quest to control thought by hijacking the educational system in Indiana.

The efforts he took to silence voices he disagreed with while governor have raised new questions about Daniels’ intentions as president of a leading research university. Critics have questioned his lack of academic credentials upon his hiring by a board of trustees he himself appointed while governor.

Several emails obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act show that Daniels took deliberate measures during his term as governor to eliminate what he considered ‘liberal breeding grounds’ such as Indiana’s public universities. He requested that all of historian Howard Zinn’s books be banned from classrooms and orchestrated a “cleanup” of courses he called “propaganda.”

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