Watchdog criticizes university for spending money on ‘identitarian politics’ as state faces budget shortfall
Illinois State University just began offering a “Queer Studies” certificate – but a government watchdog group thinks that directing funds toward “boutique areas of study” ought not to be a priority.
The public university recently announced that it would be expanding its Queer Studies program by offering a certificate.
Offered through the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, it “recognizes students’ advanced coursework in LGBTQ+ and sexuality studies,” and “builds off the existing queer studies concentration” that the university started in 2016.
A news release also states that “students currently pursuing the concentration can transfer into the formal certificate.”
The program’s Interim Director Jason Whitesel celebrated the development, stating in the news release that the expanded program aims to “reconfigure discomfort” with social norms.
“Courses in the certificate program, like Intro to LGBTQ Studies, honor queer people precisely because of who they are and what they bring to broaden and deepen our communities, including their unique contributions to history and the culture, and how they reconfigure discomfort with the norms as socially and politically productive,” Whitesel stated.
One class offered to complete the new certificate is “Queer Theatre.” According to the course description, it “introduces students to queer plays and performances that live within complex intersections of gender, race, and sexuality” with the purpose of deepening their understanding of and engagement with “queer theatre.”
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Another is “Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality.” This class examines how gender and sexuality “intersect with the social categories of sex, race, class, and nation.” One of the books that is required for the class is “Gringo Love: Stories of Sex Tourism in Brazil.”
The inclusion of the certificate in the university’s academic offerings is just the most recent example of its long standing commitment to the LGBTQ+ issue, the news release notes.
It lists several university initiatives to represent “non-cishet” people, with the earliest pro-LGBTQ+ activism dating back to 1969, and continuing to the present day. Cishet is a portmanteau of the words “cisgender” (or same gender as at birth) and “heterosexual.”
Yet LGBTQ+ efforts on campuses across the U.S. have been receiving increasingly more criticism, and ISU’s Queer Studies Certificate is no exception.
Christopher Neefus, spokesperson for Open the Books, a watchdog organization dedicated to making government spending transparent, believes that the money being spent on “boutique areas of study” in public universities neglects the “core needs” of Illinois and other states.
Neefus told The Fix in a recent email that “identitarian politics” have been slowly but surely encroaching upon every area of life, sowing “division and turmoil.”
While private universities may spend money however they wish, Neefus said state universities have a responsibility to the taxpayers who are funding them.
“Their return on investment should be graduates ready to grow the Illinois economy, make it competitive, and contribute materially to their community, state and nation,” he said.
Neefus also pointed out that states do not have unlimited funds. “Every dollar spent on building out these programs is a dollar that’s unavailable for business, STEM, and other fields where we need to remain at the vanguard,” he told The Fix.
In Illinois specifically, he noted, “It’s also a dollar unavailable for core needs elsewhere in the budget, where Illinois is trying to plug a multibillion dollar shortfall with a record $55B budget.”
The Fix reached out twice via email to the university media relations office to ask about the certificate, its impact on campus, and its response to critics. However, it did not respond.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Wooden letters spell out the word ‘queer’; Alexmia / Shutterstock