Purdue University is discussed in The Bob Zadek Show in two distinct contexts: as the campus where a student janitor faced disciplinary charges in 2008, and as the university later led by Mitch Daniels, whom Bob Zadek repeatedly names as an ideal political leader. The excerpts do not describe Purdue’s academic programs, founding, or governance beyond these references.
The Keith Sampson case
In an episode on campus speech, Bob Zadek and Harvey Silverglate discussed a case at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis involving a student employee named Keith Sampson. Zadek described Sampson as a student working on the janitorial staff to earn his tuition, who was reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan during a break. According to Zadek, the book’s cover showed a Ku Klux Klan member in full regalia, and Sampson was brought up on charges of harassing black members of the janitorial staff because the cover was viewed as threatening. Zadek framed the episode as an example of a student being disciplined for reading a serious book about civil rights Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011).
Silverglate, identified by Zadek as chairman and founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said the charge was disguised as racial harassment because the book would upset a black person seeing Sampson reading or carrying it. He stated that Sampson was convicted, but that after FIRE publicized the story and Wall Street Journal columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote a column about it in July 2008, the university backed down under pressure from alumni, reporters, phone calls and letters. Silverglate said the university acquitted Sampson after having convicted him and publicly apologized to FIRE, saying it would not happen again, but never apologized to the student. He added that they won the case only because of national press coverage Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011).
Zadek used the case to urge listeners to consult FIRE’s website to learn how their own alma maters rate on free speech, and suggested withholding donations from institutions that fare poorly. Silverglate described FIRE’s three-tier rating system of red light schools with restrictive speech codes, green light schools that allow free speech, and yellow light schools with partial restrictions, and said people use the ratings as a guide for giving and for deciding where to send their children Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011).
Mitch Daniels and Purdue
In a 2021 episode on immigration, Zadek introduced guest Daniel Di Martino, a PhD student studying the economics of immigration who was born in Venezuela and whose family settled for a time in Indiana. Zadek said Di Martino had the good fortune to study at Purdue University, which he called one of his favorite universities, both because of the institution and because of its head, Mitch Daniels. Zadek said he had many years earlier hoped Daniels would run for president and would have done all he could to get him elected, and that Daniels decided for personal reasons not to make the run Daniel Di Martino on Immigration (2021).
In a 2023 episode on public employee unions, Zadek returned to Daniels in introducing guest Philip K. Howard, founder of Common Good and author of Not Accountable. Zadek said what caught his attention was a preface by Mitch Daniels, whom he called the personification of his ideal for a leader of the country, and said he was profoundly disappointed when Daniels decided, Zadek thought in 2008, not to enter the Republican primary. Zadek stated that Daniels then became the chancellor or the president of Purdue University and had been a governor, calling him an all-around solid citizen Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023).
Howard said he had worked with Daniels when Daniels was governor and did a number of reforms with him, and that when Daniels became president of Purdue, he had Howard come and give a talk to all of his senior staff about why they should cut out their rulebooks and start looking at how to make sensible decisions day-to-day rather than simply follow the rules Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023).
Across episodes
Purdue appears in three episodes spanning 2011 to 2023, but the excerpts show no development of a single question about the university across them. The 2011 episode treats a Purdue-affiliated campus as the setting of a speech-code case; the 2021 and 2023 episodes treat Mitch Daniels’s leadership of Purdue as a biographical credential for guests discussing immigration and public employee unions respectively. The earlier treatment is advanced by Harvey Silverglate and Bob Zadek, the later ones by Bob Zadek and Philip K. Howard, but the topic itself does not carry forward.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Purdue’s founding date, location, enrollment, academic structure, or any institutional history apart from the events described. They do not give the outcome of any Purdue disciplinary proceeding beyond Silverglate’s account of the Sampson case, nor do they describe Daniels’s policies at Purdue beyond Howard’s account of a talk to senior staff. No excerpt states which campus of the Purdue system is meant where the speakers say only Purdue University. The excerpts also break off mid-sentence in several places, and nothing beyond those points is reported here.