Kansas University Pushes Trans Activism in Defiance of Kansas Voters
“transforming our local and regional landscape to be more transliberatory”
Voters have made it clear that they reject this, but the school is just doing what they want to do anyway.
John D. Sailer writes at City Journal:
Kansans Don’t Want Trans Activism, but Kansas University Doesn’t Care
Over the past few years, Kansas lawmakers have grappled with the public-policy implications of gender ideology. In 2023, the state legislature overrode a governor’s veto to pass a bill barring males from playing on girls’ student sports teams. This year, a district court judge sided with state attorney general Kris Kobach and prevented Kansans from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses.
These policies seem to reflect the will of Kansas citizens, who voted for Donald Trump by double-digit margins in the last three presidential elections. But at the University of Kansas (KU)—the state’s flagship university—a new center seeks to empower activists to fight these laws.
Trans Studies at the Commons serves as a hub for the burgeoning field of transgender studies. “We study questions of trans life, trans theorizing, and trans materiality across epistemological and ontological bounds,” the initiative’s website states. The program kicked off this year with a million-dollar grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
Through a public records request, I’ve acquired KU’s proposal for the Trans Studies at the Commons initiative. The document gives a detailed—and remarkably candid—look at the program, which seeks to transform both academia and the state’s political landscape.
The proposal gets political within the first two paragraphs, rebuking the Kansas legislature for “advancing repressive anti-trans bills.” The authors suggest that such legislation, and the broader “crisis facing trans people,” justify the creation of a “physical and virtual hub” to “catalyze growth in the larger field of Trans Studies.” One of the center’s goals, the authors state, would be “transforming our local and regional landscape to be more transliberatory.” In practice, it would hire a new professor, recruit a cohort of non-residential fellows, give grants to local nonprofits “working toward Trans and Racial liberation,” and create a “Trans Oral History.”
The proposal becomes increasingly partisan as it proceeds.
NEW: At the University of Kansas, a new center aims to recruit “scholar-activists” to help fight “anti-trans bills.”
It also seeks to “transform the academy” while advancing a “theory and practice of transgender liberation"—according to records I've acquired.
🧵🧵🧵 pic.twitter.com/sWCU0vE4yo
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) December 16, 2024
"Trans Studies at the Commons" kicked off this year via a $1M grant from the Mellon Foundation.
The program—which promises hire a new professor and doll out virtual fellowships—is meant to serves as a hub for trans studies.
Through FOIA, I've acquired the proposal. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/VpWIJh9KDG
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) December 16, 2024
Some background. Over the past few years, Kansas lawmakers have grappled with the public-policy implications of gender ideology. For example:
➡️In 2023, the state legislature overrode a governor’s veto to pass a bill barring males from playing on girls’ student sports teams.… pic.twitter.com/7wyv3ERF76
— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) December 16, 2024
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The correct approach to “Trans Studies” is to study the cause and appropriate treatment of the mental disorder known as gender dysphoria. While this disorder should not be stigmatized, it should not be normalized or celebrated.
Making up phrases like trans life, trans theorizing, trans materiality, and trans liberatory, and using them in faux intellectual sounding contexts, like “across epistemological and ontological bounds” is a fine example of pretension and pomposity. When did it become a legitimate function of a state university to politically “transform [the] local and regional landscape”?
Leave a Comment