Academic Censorship

Two frustrating pieces of information that have recently come to my attention:

• First, Florida Atlantic University has proposed shutting down their Women's Studies Center and Master's degree program in Women's Studies, on the grounds of budget cuts (despite increases in administrative salaries in the past year).

I'm a little worried that this is the beginning of a slippery slope for Women's Studies programs--many of these programs have roots in 1970s Second Wave feminist activism, when the mass media attention to the feminist movement gave feminist scholarship leverage in academia. But I feel like feminism no longer has as much popular support in the mass media, and thus schools like FAU feel like they can just silently shut down these programs.

Now, I maintain that the most important classes that I took in college were Women's Studies courses: they taught me how to think, opened my eyes to social inequality, made me care about social change, and in addition, the upper-level seminars were some of the only classes where I was assigned complex theoretical texts, which really are responsible for making me want to go to graduate school. I know many other people, both Women's Studies majors and not, who were similarly changed by Women's Studies classes.

In addition, both at my undergrad institution and here at UT, the Women's Studies professors and community were some of the most vocal voices for women when it came to campus issues from sexual assualt to equity in employee salaries--these women are needed as campus activists. And finally, there just not that many schools that offer advanced degrees in Women's Studies. To lose even one is a fairly major loss for the field.

So that's my pitch for Women's Studies--now, go sign the petition.

• Meanwhile, in "everyone's still afraid of sex" news: Georgia House Republicans are attempting to bar the teaching of any type of sexuality studies in state universities, specifically targeting queer theory. They also want all professors who teach and reasearch such subjects fired. Ah, censorship. An excerpt from the OnlineAthens article:

State Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, took the House well on Friday to announce a "grassroots" effort to oust professors with expertise in subjects like male prostitution, oral sex and "queer theory."

"This is not considered higher education," Byrd said. "If legislators are going to dole out the dollars, we should have a say-so in where they go."

Byrd and her supporters, including state Rep. Calvin Hill, R-Canton, said they will team with the Christian Coalition and other religious groups to pressure fellow lawmakers and the University System Board of Regents to eliminate the jobs.

"Our job is to educate our people in sciences, business, math," said Hill, a vice chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. He said professors aren't going to meet those needs "by teaching a class in queer theory."

Not that the OnlineAthens helps any by titling the article "Steamy sex courses fire GOP's ire." In fact, the only course that the article lists legislators as being specifically pissed about is a graduate course in queer theory. Since I'm sure those Republican legislators have no idea what queer theory is (for the record, an incredibly complex body of knowledge about discourse, the State, the family, sexuality, gender performance, politics, activism, etc), it would appear that they're upset about... the word queer? The suggestion of alternative sexualities?

Academic censorship reaaaaaally pisses me off--so legislators are claiming that we shouldn't study things that make them uncomfortable? And that they know more about what's worth studying than people who've spent 10 years getting their PhDs? I'm also concerned about the confusion with how the academy works--that is, with the conflation between research and teaching. A professor who researches male prostititution 1) isn't necessarily a male prostitute, and 2) probably doesn't even teach classes on male prostitution. Oh, and for the record, just because you stop studying something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And don't even get me started on this claim that universities are for "sciences, business, and math"? How about learning critical thinking? How about being an informed citizen? How about, you know, liberal arts education?! Ugh.