The Department of Gender Studies strongly condemns the Wyoming state senate for adopting an amendment to the state budget that would remove funding from the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies department.
The Department of Gender Studies strongly condemns the Wyoming state senate for adopting an amendment to the state budget that would remove funding from the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies department.
The Department of Gender Studies strongly condemns the Wyoming state senate for adopting an amendment to the state budget that would remove funding from the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies department. Senators rejected the academic legitimacy of Gender Studies and labeled Gender Studies as “ideologically driven and biased.” This action is a dangerous erosion of academic freedom and interference in the curriculum. It is surely a part of the ideologically and politically driven project to ban critical race theory and any critical exploration of the transatlantic slave trade and its afterlives in the United States and elsewhere. Meanwhile, we should not untangle Wyoming state senate’s actions from other measures across the country that seek to criminalize minorities, especially gender non-conforming and transgender children. Last week, the Governor of Texas directed state agencies to investigate gender-affirming care for transgender children under the cruel auspices of “child abuse.” Such targeting of families whilst asking neighbors to turn on each other and report such gender-affirming care, criminalizes the vulnerable while increasing their risk to potential violence.
Both Texas’ Governor and the Wyoming state senate make clear what it is they oppose. State senator Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) who brought the budget amendment forward concerning the University of Wyoming’s Gender Studies department reportedly advised the senate that she opposed the goals of Gender Studies and specifically “knowledge about multiple forms of oppression, marginalization,” knowledge about resistance, and “the translation of feminist and social justice theories into service and activism.”(1)
Gender Studies is of critical importance to all and no more so than when it is condemned for its core mission: teaching about inequality and injustice and fostering students’ critical thinking and commitment to social justice. The university cannot exist without open inquiry and critical thinking. But what is a country or a university that refuses to confront injustice and inequality? A country or a university without a future, one dedicated to protecting the interests of the powerful at the expense of the powerless. We stand proudly against this inegalitarian social vision and with those who continue to fight such oppressive measures on the ground.
1. Jazmine Hall, Wyoming Tribune Eagle. “Senate Votes to No Longer Fund UW Gender Studies Program.” February 25, 2022. https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/senate-votes-to-no-longer-fund-uw-gender-studies-program/article_3aaef771-f088-5050-8425-0ac615a28348.html.
