From Florida to Budapest, regimes attacking democracy know one thing: You can’t control a population that questions power.
We all know that Trump and the Republican Party are coming for higher education. But, what many don’t know is that in this century, authoritarians come for gender studies first.
In Hungary, Viktor Orban declared gender studies illegal, then refused accreditation of the Central European University in Budapest if they continued their program. The Putin regime slowly destroyed all the gender studies programs in Russia (one of which I taught in until 2020). Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, and billions of dollars in research grants have been cancelled. Trump even passed an executive order saying his government will take over the accreditation of higher education—just like his buddy Orban.
What’s more, Trump declared war on gender studies with his executive order, Protecting Women from Gender Ideology Extremism, which dictates there are “only two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” By declaring that there are only two sexes and that gender does not exist, Trump effectively destroyed the entire field of gender studies. Scientific evidence shows that sex is far more complicated than a strict binary—for example, people with intersex conditions. Trump’s Protecting Women from Gender Ideology Extremism EO would force those of us who teach gender studies to ignore the expertise of our own field. If enforced, it would mean we could not study and teach anthropological and historical evidence that shows sex has been anything but binary.
As for Trump’s claim that gender is an ideology and not real, anyone living in the world today knows that gender does in fact exist and that it doesn’t always align with sex assigned at birth. Trump’s executive order would force gender studies to become “sex studies” and teach a series of lies about the body, culture and history.
Although the Trump regime is clearly coming after gender studies, it appears to be even more strategic than its ideological cousins in Russia and Hungary. Instead of coming directly for gender studies, the Trump administration is coming for return on investment. Consider the current return-on-investment investigation at the University of Florida. There, gender studies will be compared to majors in civil engineering, nursing and computer science. This is akin to comparing apples to a lone kumquat. After all, gender studies—like humanities in general—is not created to produce specialists, as much as it is meant to teach individuals to read carefully, think deeply, write proficiently and pose thoughtful questions.
Gender studies considers how things are not “natural facts” but are instead historical and cultural artifacts. It situates the way things are into a complex understanding of power, history, culture and the economy. Like philosophy or anthropology, gender studies does not accept “common sense” but instead digs deeper into why people think or act the way they do.
It’s an incredibly useful major to study, including alongside a pre-professional degree. With gender studies, medical practitioners can understand how structural racism can affect patient care or how to respond when babies are not easily marked male or female. Gender studies can help computer scientists figure out how facial recognition can be biased or how AI can reproduce race and gender prejudices.
But far more importantly, gender studies, like humanities and qualitative social sciences, produces critically engaged thinkers who do not assume the world is as it is because it must be this way, but rather consider how we got here and how we might change things.
Return on investment does not consider how even taking a single class in gender studies can make someone a better nurse or computer engineer by helping them see the deep intersections between race and class and gender and history. It does not consider how gender studies can make someone a better parent by making them less interested in enforcing a gender binary upon their children. It does not consider how gender studies can make someone a better citizen by not accepting the lies of an authoritarian regime as truth.
Unfortunately, despite what gender studies could give us as a culture and a nation, it is—and will continue to be—attacked. None of us should be surprised that gender studies is being shut down around the country at institutions including New College of Florida or Rhode Island College. By transforming the far right’s “war on gender” into return on investment, the Trump regime can avoid the deeper question of whether knowledge should be controlled by politicians.
I would be nearly hopeless about the future of gender studies in the U.S. if not for a valuable lesson I learned teaching gender studies in Russia: Critical thinking is difficult to destroy. It will fester in the cracks and fissures left behind by the regime. And, when the regime collapses—as all authoritarian regimes eventually do—gender studies will return with the skills and courage to teach about how the world really is, not how many on the far right wish it would be.
Ms. Classroom wants to hear from educators and students being impacted by legislation attacking public education, higher education, gender, race and sexuality studies, activism and social justice in education, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs for our series, ‘Banned! Voices from the Classroom.’ Submit pitches and/or op-eds and reflections (between 500-800 words) to Ms. contributing editor Aviva Dove-Viebahn at adove-viebahn@msmagazine.com. Posts will be accepted on a rolling basis.
