Kansas Public University Leaders Order Employees to Remove Pronouns From Email Signatures
“The officials say they’re complying with new state prohibitions against diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The pendulum is definitely swinging back in some places. People are done being pushed by wokeness.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
College Employees in Kansas Can’t List Pronouns in Emails
Kansas public university leaders have ordered employees to remove “gender-identifying pronouns or gender ideology” from their email signatures. The officials say they’re complying with new state prohibitions against diversity, equity and inclusion.
In March, the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature passed Senate Bill 125, a nearly 300-page piece of budget legislation. The following month, Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, signed it into law. A spokesperson from the governor’s office didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment on why.
According to a few lines on page 254, the Kansas secretary of administration must certify that all state agencies—including colleges and universities—have eliminated all positions, policies, preferences and activities “relating to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
SB 125 also specifically requires the secretary to certify that agencies have “removed gender identifying pronouns or gender ideology from email signature blocks on state employee’s [sic] email accounts and any other form of communication.” The law doesn’t define DEI or gender ideology.
Kansas isn’t the first state with a GOP-controlled legislature this year to pass nonfinancial public higher ed provisions by inserting them into budget legislation. Among other things, Indiana lawmakers required faculty to undergo “productivity” reviews and post syllabi online, and Ohio lawmakers stressed that boards of trustees have “final, overriding authority to approve or reject any establishment or modification of academic programs, curricula, courses, general education requirements, and degree programs.”
Ross Marchand, program counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told Inside Higher Ed the new Kansas law is unconstitutional.
“No one knows how to interpret this, and it’s overly broad,” Marchand said. “And both of these issues are fatal for First Amendment purposes.”
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Comments
I’d be interested in knowing to what extent previous U policy encouraged or even perhaps demanded the inclusion of these pronouns.
If gender identifying pronouns or gender ideology in email signature blocks are protected, then anyone objecting to the insanity can demand their own choice of terms. Want to be a prince? Then demand ‘His Highness’ not just he/him/his. Want to repudiate the insanity that is Woke English? Then opt for something else e.g. 他, 他的, or if female 她 and 她的. If folk can’t pronounce your pronouns that’s not your problem, that’s theirs.
Master and Kickme.