University Of Iowa Slated To Roll Back Gender, Women’s, And Sexuality Studies Department

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OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:25 AM – Monday, December 30, 2024

The University of Iowa has revealed that it plans on closing its Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies department as public universities begin rolling back DEI programs.

“Under the proposed plan, the college would close the departments of American Studies and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, as well as the current majors in American Studies and in Social Justice, which have fewer than 60 students combined, and create a new major in Social and Cultural Analysis,” the university wrote in a statement.

The University of Iowa added that the “proposed move is part of a multi-year administrative restructure of the college intended to better serve students and faculty.”

The university’s shift follows after Iowa’s state Board of regents approved 10 measures to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

“We are excited to reposition these programs for the future,” stated Sara Sanders, the dean of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

“The creation of Social and Cultural Analysis would allow us to build on our considerable legacy in areas that are essential to our mission, while creating more sustainable structures and room for innovative new curricula,” she continued.

Iowa Republican lawmaker Taylor Collins (R-Iowa) applauded the move, slamming DEI initiatives as “wasteful spending” of taxpayer dollars.

“This is the perfect example of the kind of wasteful spending that the legislature’s talking about,” Collins stated. “We have an entire department who is focused on peddling an ideological agenda, but to no benefit to the constituents and taxpayers in the state.”

Collins continued, ensuring that the Iowa House Higher Education committee will instruct the Board of Regents to perform a “total review” of academic programs they preside over to meet the needs of the state workforce.

“Our Board of Regents and the University of Iowa know that the Higher Education Committee was going to be looking at this issue, so this was them trying to put out that fire before it really started in Des Moines,” Collins added.

Meanwhile, some staffers in the Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies are “disappointed” with the change.

“We’ve seen our majors grow,” stated Lina-Maria Murillo, an assistant professor at the university. “In fact, social justice was one of the fastest growing majors of the units that are being sort of restructured in the new School of Social and Cultural Analysis. So it is, again, disappointing because it’s clear that the students want these courses.”

“Our intentions as scholars, as thinkers, is not to indoctrinate people with any sort of ideology, but to offer them a place for free thought,” Murillo continued.

“No one is forcing students who don’t want to be in these classes to take these classes. There are hundreds of courses at the University of Iowa that students can choose from,” she added. “By minimizing courses on Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality studies or African American studies or Latina, Latino, Latinx studies, it is a way of censoring what students’ education can look like and be, and that to me is a problem.”

The proposal to roll the initiatives back could go into effect on July 1^st, 2025, if approved at the Board of Regents meeting in February.

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