Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities are both incubators of feminist awakening and contested ground in the struggle over equity, inclusion and the freedom to learn.

‘Lone Star Three’: How Three UT Austin Students Paved the Way for Birth Control Access in 1960s Texas

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by and

In 1969 Victoria Foe, Judy Smith and Barbara Hines were students at the University of Texas in Austin when Smith invited Foe and Hines to attend women’s liberation meetings at her house. Their discussions led them to start a campus Birth Control Information Center and eventually evolved into an underground network that helped women access safe abortion at a time when it was illegal in Texas. 

Their activism would eventually extend far beyond their university campus, planting the seeds for Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that would legalize abortion in the U.S. Not until 1965 did birth control in the U.S. become legal for married women. Not until 1972 did it become legal for anyone, married or unmarried, to access birth control.

A new documentary, Lone Star Three, directed by Karen Stirgwolt, tells the story of the women who formed the underground networks that allowed young women to access reproductive care in Texas in the days leading up to Roe v. Wade. Ms. recently spoke with Foe and Hines (Smith passed away in 2013), and archivist Alice Embree, about their activism from the 1960s to the present moment.

What Trump’s Rollback of DEI Means for First-Generation Students Like Me

PUBLISHED 3/4/2026 by

“People can take anything from you, but they can never take away your education.” My roots are in Guyana, a Caribbean nation, and this mantra of resilience echoed through generations and followed me from Guyana to Queens, N.Y.

But when President Trump recently bragged he “ended DEI in America,” he was openly celebrating the very shift I’ve already felt in my own education.

When I entered college in Fairfield, Conn., I carried more than my own ambition. I carried the unrealized dreams of my grandmother and the women in our village who were told their place was in the home, not a lecture hall. My education isn’t just for me—it’s for my family, my community and every girl back in our motherland who never got the chance and never will.

But higher education in the United States has increasingly transformed from a public good into a private marketplace. The very pathways that made my presence in these institutions possible are now being publicly dismantled through legislation and policy.

Immigrant and first-generation students do not weaken universities. We strengthen them. If we believe education cannot be taken from us, then we must be willing to fight for the conditions that make it accessible in the first place. In a political moment where leaders celebrate the end of DEI as progress, defending its need has never felt more urgent.

Texas A&M’s Women’s and Gender Studies Closure Signals a Wider Crackdown on Academic Freedom

PUBLISHED 2/24/2026 by

Texas A&M University’s decision to eliminate its women’s and gender studies program is not happening in a vacuum. For years, the university has steadily rolled back programs, courses and resources tied to gender and LGBTQ+ studies, leaving students and faculty with fewer spaces to learn, teach and engage with these subjects.

Now, with the program gone and new classroom restrictions in place, the impact is being felt directly by the people who rely on these courses to study, teach and understand the world around them.

For many students and educators, this moment feels like part of a much larger shift unfolding across the country. As universities scale back programs and limit discussions around race, gender and sexuality, what can be taught—and who feels supported in the classroom—is rapidly changing. The closure at Texas A&M reflects a growing national pattern: one that raises urgent questions about the future of academic freedom in public higher education.

The Heritage Foundation’s Plan to Keep Women Uneducated, Pregnant and Subservient

PUBLISHED 2/20/2026 by

Since Trump’s re-ascendance to the White House, the reactionary conservative movement has become the most aggressive and unfettered it has been in my lifetime. And they are getting very, very clear on what they think an acceptable life looks like for women:

—Settle for any man who decides he wants you.
—Don’t go to college.
—Marry early.
—Have as many babies as possible.
—Quit your job (or don’t pursue one in the first place) to stay home full time and depend financially on your husband.
—Shoulder the blame if you wind up married to a jerk.
—Wind up impoverished if you divorce.
—Face social condemnation if you fail to follow the tradwife script.
—Contraception should be illegal or at least hard to get; same for IVF and other fertility treatments.

This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a plan they wrote down and published: Last month, the Heritage Foundation published “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years.” Think of it as Project 2275, a detailed plan that is mostly about how America can spend the next two and a half centuries undoing the feminist progress we’ve made.

Raped, Recorded, Shared—Then Abandoned by the System: ‘Once It’s on the Internet, It’s Out There’

PUBLISHED 2/3/2026 by and

Survivors of online sexual exploitation and abuse are not just confronting individual perpetrators—they are up against systems that were never designed to protect them.

A new report by Equality Now and the Sexual Violence Prevention Association documents how survivors who report tech-facilitated sexual abuse routinely encounter jurisdictional dead ends, outdated laws and opaque platform policies that leave harmful material circulating indefinitely. For many, the abuse does not end with the assault itself, but continues through repeated viewing, sharing and threats—often with devastating financial, professional and psychological consequences.

The report also makes clear that this harm is not inevitable. Survivors point to concrete policy solutions that could meaningfully change outcomes: consent-based laws governing the online distribution of sexual material, clear and enforceable takedown obligations for tech companies, survivor-centered reporting systems and access to free legal and mental health support.

Accountability is possible, but only if lawmakers and platforms choose to act.

‘Devastating’: Texas A&M Eliminates Women’s and Gender Studies Degree Program

PUBLISHED 2/2/2026 by

Texas A&M University announced it is eliminating its women’s and gender studies degree program. University leaders made the announcement alongside the results of a campus-wide course review launched after a video of a student confronting a professor over gender identity content went viral last fall and sparked political backlash.

“Limiting what can be taught in a university classroom is not education,” said Amy Reid, program director for Freedom to Learn at PEN America. “It’s ideological control.”

The canceled courses the university announced Friday were spread across the Bush School of Government and Public Service and the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Education and Human Development. The university later identified canceled courses as “Introduction to Race and Ethnicity”; “Religions of the World”; “Ethics in Public Policy”; “Diversity in Sport Organizations”; “Cultural Leadership and Exploration for Society”; and “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Youth Development Organizations.”

Texas A&M has made similar cuts in recent years. In 2024, regents voted to eliminate dozens of low-enrollment minors and certificates, including an LGBTQ+ studies minor, a decision faculty said was made in response to conservative criticism and with limited faculty input.

Federal Civil Rights Protections for Students Are Being Hollowed Out

PUBLISHED 1/28/2026 by

At least 25,000 unresolved civil rights complaints involving race, gender and disability discrimination are currently stalled as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights—leaving students in K-12 schools and colleges with few viable paths to federal protection.

At the same time, new Title IX guidance has shifted federal priorities away from survivors of sexual violence and toward expanded due-process protections for the accused—further eroding accountability in school environments already struggling to respond to gender-based harm.

Taken together, these changes represent a sweeping redefinition of equal access to education—one that disproportionately harms women, students of color, disabled students and survivors of sexual assault.

Last semester, after I published a piece in Ms. critiquing Charlie Kirk and violent masculinity, South Carolina politicians—including Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Rep. Ralph Norman—publicly suggested I should be fired. In a climate where ideologically driven attacks on funding and governance threaten the very survival of colleges and universities, I ultimately resigned my full professorship. The message from state lawmakers was unmistakable: Even private institutions are no longer insulated from direct government interference, regardless of stated commitments to academic freedom.

Hockey’s Cultural Renaissance Can’t Ignore Domestic Violence

PUBLISHED 1/13/2026 by and

HBO’s recent juggernaut, Heated Rivalry, has blasted to the front of seemingly everyone’s consciousness over the last few months. While the press tour of the two lead actors promoting the show is, in a word, delightful, the attention being paid to fictional hockey players’ relationships off-the-ice is, unfortunately, a stark reminder of the reality of the state of gender-based violence in the sport.

Countless players for the National Hockey League (NHL), as well as the junior and minor leagues, have been accused of domestic and sexual violence. Yet many of those same players are retained on lucrative professional and semiprofessional contracts, and some have been able to keep playing even while under investigation for criminal sexual and domestic assault.

The NHL remains the only of the four major professional sports leagues (which also includes the NFL, NBA and MLB) that lacks a formal and specific domestic violence policy when players are accused of sexual or domestic violence.

At Turning Point USA, JD Vance Picks Up Where Charlie Kirk Left Off

PUBLISHED 1/6/2026 by

Vice President JD Vance gave the closing keynote speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 conference in Phoenix on Dec. 21. It was the first TP gathering since the right-wing organization’s co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed in September, and thus bound to attract an extraordinary amount of media coverage and commentary.

His speech cycled through a laundry list of right-wing Christian nationalist gripes about Democrats and the “left.” It’s certainly his right, and prerogative, to share his views. But it’s up to us—his audience—either to accept or push back on those takes.

That’s what I’m doing here.

I’m a Texan. But I Don’t Know if I Can Be a Texas OB-GYN.

PUBLISHED 1/6/2026 by

Mary (not her real name) tells her story to Bonnie Fuller:

“Texans don’t give up easily, and I’m a Texan. I’m in my second year of medical school in Texas, and I’m studying to be an OB-GYN.

“I grew up in Texas, and I’m open-minded about staying in the state to practice obstetrics and gynecology after I graduate, despite the laws that ban most abortions from conception. A lot of the people that I love are in Texas, and there’s this big draw to stay here because it’s my community. I really want to care for other women.

“But what worries me most about practicing here is that I won’t be able to provide certain types of care because of the laws. I worry about the moral distress I’ll feel if I’m unable to act in particular cases—especially in emergency situations when a woman might need a termination and the law says that you can’t do one.”