The following was sent to the Bloomingtonian:
February 27, 2023
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Since Ron DeSantis of Florida signed the “Stop Woke Act” in April 2022, there has been a disturbing trend of state legislatures across the country proposing and passing legislation that directly interferes with the free speech, academic freedom, and due process rights of educators and students on campuses nationally; see, for example, here, here and here.
The Indiana House voted last week to support an amendment to the Budget Bill HB1001 that would prohibit state funding to the Kinsey Institute on the IUB campus. The Executive Committees of the Bloomington Chapter of the AAUP and the Graduate and Professional Student Government at IUB have passed the following resolution regarding the vote.
“The IUB chapter of the AAUP and the IUB Graduate and Professional Student Government deplore the decision of the Indiana House to amend HB1001 specifically to withhold funding for the renowned Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. The state of Indiana does not require any sex and gender education in public school curriculum (though many schools do choose to include it). The work of the Kinsey Institute is critical to the health and welfare of the state of Indiana.
We call on the IU administration not only to commit to making up any lost state funding of the Kinsey Institute from non-state-appropriated revenue streams, but also to increase Kinsey Institute funding overall.
We moreover call on the administration to make it known publicly that it is increasing funding of the Institute as a rebuke to a legislative majority willing to pass amendments based on far-right rumor and disinformation.
The proposed symbolic funding cut is itself a wake-up call to the IU administration to show that it is willing to defend the principles of academic freedom and higher education in service of the public good and to put its money where its mouth is by using its budget to promote the reach and visibility of Kinsey research in service of the people of Indiana.”
Chelsea Brinda
President, Graduate and Professional Student Government, Indiana University Bloomington (https://gpsg.indiana.edu/index.html)
Ben Robinson
President, IUB-Chapter, American Association of University Professors (https://aaup.sitehost.iu.edu)
