Feminist Academia and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Three Ways Trump’s Weird Fixation on DEI Is Hurting Women

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

The Trump administration’s obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion has moved far beyond rhetoric. It is now reshaping how women’s stories get told, whose health crises are allowed to be named, and what kinds of research are permitted to survive.

Across history, healthcare and science, women are watching decades of hard-fought progress become collateral damage in a culture war designed to erase people in real time.

That damage is already visible.

Republicans derailed long-awaited progress on the American Women’s History Museum by inserting provisions policing which women count as women and handing Trump appointees sweeping control over the museum itself.

Meanwhile, the newly reintroduced Momnibus legislation—created in response to the maternal mortality crisis devastating Black women and families—has been forced to strip much of the word “Black” from its language in order to survive politically under an administration openly hostile to DEI initiatives.

And the consequences are not abstract: NIH grants focused on women’s health have reportedly dropped by 30 percent, while words like “women” and “gender” themselves are becoming liabilities in funding proposals.

Women’s health was already chronically underfunded and misunderstood long before Trump returned to office. But the administration’s escalating war on DEI is accelerating that neglect—and making clear just how much is at stake when political ideology begins dictating whose lives deserve to be studied, protected and remembered.

To the Men Who Send Women Hate Mail

PUBLISHED 5/15/2026 by

I am not alone in receiving unsolicited emails—especially as a professor, public writer and thinker, and woman who dares to speak her mind. Often, the emails are thoughtful, engaging and sometimes deeply moving expressions of gratitude that warm the heart. However, from time to time, there are the crude, crass and obtuse intruders, thrusting insults and even threats into our inboxes. These expressions of masculine fragility and anger—whether intended to or not—chill the receiver’s speech and cause women to silence themselves.  

Here, then, is my response to Mr. Sawyer—but also, in many ways, a response to the countless men who insert themselves into women’s inboxes with condescension, hostility and misplaced certainty. Women in public life know these messages well: the unsolicited lectures, the attempts at intimidation, the casual cruelty masquerading as critique. Consider this every woman’s letter to the crass and crude male intruder in her inbox. I hope you enjoy.

From Smith College to Florida’s New College: MAGA’s Campaign Against Universities, Women’s Studies and Liberal Arts

PUBLISHED 5/6/2026 by

As a professor at Smith College and chair of the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, I have closely followed the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education—and on my field in particular.

This week, those attacks landed squarely on my own campus: The Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into Smith’s policy of admitting transgender women, arguing the college may be violating Title IX by recognizing gender identity rather than “biological sex.” The probe—prompted by a complaint from a conservative advocacy group—questions whether a women’s college can remain legally “single sex” while including trans women, and raises the possibility of federal penalties or loss of status.

This move is not an isolated action. It is part of a broader campaign to redefine civil rights protections in ways that exclude transgender people, and to pressure colleges and universities into compliance with that vision.

It is also one of many recent attacks on higher education—especially liberal arts institutions—by Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration, aimed at universities they view as out of step with a conservative, anti-feminist agenda. In a 2021 speech titled “Universities Are the Enemy,” JD Vance declared, “We must aggressively attack the universities in this country. … Maybe it’s time to seize the endowments, penalize them for being on the wrong side of some of these culture war issues.”

Women’s, gender and sexuality studies teaches students to think critically, to question the status quo and to understand how power shapes our lives across gender, race, class, sexuality and more. These are precisely the kinds of questions that have made the field a target. Rather than engage with this work, critics have increasingly sought to discredit or dismantle it altogether. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 provides a roadmap for doing just that—but many of these strategies have already been tested at the state level.

How ICE Became the Enforcement Arm of the Patriarchy

PUBLISHED 5/4/2026 by

Speaking in early February, while the nation was still reeling from the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, Jackson Katz, a leading voice in gender violence prevention and masculinity studies, and Loretta Ross, a celebrated Black feminist scholar and cofounder of SisterSong, examined the deadly ways misogyny and racism intersect in Donald Trump’s America.

The two of them had a nuanced exploration of how government institutions, cultural narratives and political movements shape—and weaponize—issues of gender and race. Their candid exchange critiques the forces behind U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and right-wing populism, and challenges us to rethink empathy, identity and our strategies for building a more inclusive feminist movement.

Banned From Talking About Third-Trimester Abortion Care at a Texas Medical School: The Ms. Q&A with Dr. Shelley Sella

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) cancelled Dr. Shelley Sella’s scheduled campus talk in January about her recent book Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care, which she had been invited to give by the Texas Tech chapter of Medical Students for Choice (MSFC) in collaboration with MSFC’s Board of Directors. The administration told right-wing outlet Texas Scorecard that it decided hosting her was “not in the best interest of the university.” The decision to ban Sella from campus was made after days of coordinated activism by the Turning Point USA chapter at Texas Tech in conjunction with two antiabortion activists: Mark Lee Dickson and Jim Baxa. 

The cancellation of Sella’s talk was not “an anomaly,” as Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day writes, but part and parcel of the “antiabortion snitch culture” on college campuses—”part of the broader conservative attack on academia that’s gained steam over the last few years.”

“And it’s not just impacting a few schools or professors,” Valenti continues. “Antiabortion groups are determined to eradicate any iota of pro-choice speech on college campuses. Now is the time for us to make as much noise as possible and not back off one single inch.”

Taking seriously Valenti’s call to “make noise” rather than retreat in the face of escalating efforts to suppress pro-abortion speech, Ms. sat down with both Sella and Claire Surkis, a medical student in Connecticut who serves on MSFC’s Board of Directors, to explore the impact and implications of the university’s actions.

‘Who Will Revere the Black Woman?’ Remembering Nancy, Cerina and So Many More

PUBLISHED 4/22/2026 by

Even though I did not know Nancy Metayer, my heart is utterly broken by the loss of her life and the violence of her death. The night before her funeral, I joined a virtual vèyè in her honor—a space to keep watch, to remember her impact and to hold one another in communal care.

That same day, news broke about Dr. Cerina Fairfax, also killed in her home. I did not know her either, and still, I was gutted.

Nor did I know Pastor Tammy McCollum, Ashly Robinson, Qualeisha Barnes, Davonta Curtis or Barbara Deer—Black women killed in just a matter of weeks. And to think these are only the names we know.

In moments like this, I find myself returning to a question first posed by Abbey Lincoln decades ago: “Who will revere the Black woman?” The reality of this violence—and the way it is so often explained away or softened—makes that question feel as urgent as ever.

Black feminists have long named the patterns, the structures and the stakes. And still, we are left mourning, naming and insisting: We will not let their lives be forgotten. We will continue the work in their honor—because we revere them.

Black Feminist Visionary Beverly Guy-Sheftall to Discuss New Book ‘Black! Feminist! Free!’ @ LA Ms. Mag HQ, April 23

PUBLISHED 4/14/2026 by

A leading voice in Black feminist scholarship will take center stage in Beverly Hills later this month, as Beverly Guy-Sheftall joins professor and dean emerita Bonnie Thornton Dill for a public conversation on her new book, Black! Feminist! Free!

The event, hosted at Ms. magazine headquarters in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 23, from 6 to 8 p.m., is free and open to the public. Attendees can expect an evening of reflection, dialogue and community, with light refreshments provided. Copies of Guy-Sheftall’s book will be available for purchase on site, followed by a signing hosted by Reparations Club. RSVP today!

Stop Calling Hungary an Authoritarian Playbook

PUBLISHED 4/11/2026 by | UPDATED 4/13/2026 at 7:33 A.M. PT

A popular explanation for today’s attacks on academic freedom is that the Trump administration is following an authoritarian playbook, with Hungary under Viktor Orbán cast as the model. This metaphor suggests the future is inevitable. It’s not. And now, with Orbán voted out of power after 16 years, that assumption looks even more fragile.

For the feminist scholars who experienced—and resisted—Hungary’s attacks on higher education, the idea that Orbán fashioned a playbook that others are now copying misses the point.

Instead, what we are seeing is an international illiberal movement that circulates money, ideas and strategies across borders. When Hungarian politicians attack “gender” and higher education, they use these concepts as a shorthand for rejecting the liberal world order.

That means Hungary’s approach should serve as a warning, but not a script.

The attacks succeed when the conditions are ripe. And those conditions are not fixed. As Hungary’s recent election makes clear, expecting the worst won’t save U.S. higher education. Treating democratic backsliding as inevitable risks obscuring the very possibility of change.

‘First They Came for My College’: The Takeover of a Florida College and the Students Who Refused to Disappear

PUBLISHED 4/9/2026 by

When I told coworkers and friends I was going to see a documentary about the right-wing takeover of a small public Florida college, the reaction was immediate and unanimous: Why would you do that to yourself? Too depressing. I’d be too angry.

They weren’t wrong. Premiering at SXSW last month and directed by Patrick Bresnan, First They Came for My College is, at times, almost unbearable to watch—a slow, procedural dismantling of a public institution, carried out in meeting rooms and press conferences and budget lines.

But what stayed with me wasn’t only the anger—it was the stubborn, surprising insistence on community, joy and showing up anyway.