Several University of Wisconsin professors made recent comments about what President Trump’s administration will mean for transgender-identifying people, with one saying that it is “profoundly concerning and dangerous.”
The professor also said Trump’s presidency is dangerous for everyone.
“Trump’s election is a danger to everyone in the country and everyone in the world, full stop,” Professor Tyrell Haberkorn told The Badger Herald, a student-run newspaper. “But I think it’s profoundly concerning and dangerous for trans people — especially young trans people.” Haberkorn is a professor of Southeast Asian Studies and chair of the LGBTQ+ Committee at the University of Wisconsin.
Later in the interview, Haberkorn warned about the University of Wisconsin’s recent guidelines about releasing statements with political neutrality. She thinks that the guidelines might prevent the institution from adequately defending transgender-identifying people.
“We have to be explicitly supportive and explicitly loud, to say over and over again to trans students that they are welcome here and we will do what we can to keep you safe,” she said.
Another professor told The Badger Herald that the lead-up to the election resulted in discrimination and bigotry against transgender-identifying people.
“This last election cycle put a continuous stream of misinformed, hateful anti-trans discourse into the airwaves, spreading fear and hatred and inaccuracy,” Professor Finn Enke, the director of the undergraduate LGBTQ+ studies certificate program, said. “We are seeing many of the things that make our lives possible being taken away.”
[RELATED: Intersectional LGBT group holds ‘Transgender Day of Remembrance’ vigil at Georgetown]
Enke continued to say that acting such “doesn’t only affect people who are currently identifying as trans or non-binary.”
“It affects everybody and makes everybody feel very cautious about expressing any kind of question or complexity around gender expression or gender identity,” the professor said.
Several college and university professors have expressed dismay over President Trump’s victory last month. For example, faculty members at Oregon State University wrote an article in which they said Trump won by adopting an “ideology of white supremacy” that adheres to “hegemonic gender norms.”
“Apart from official connections, the connection between Christian nationalism and Trumpism underscores a shared ideology of white supremacy, adherence to hegemonic gender norms, and the willingness to employ violence for political ends,” they said.
Campus Reform contacted Tyrell Haberkorn and Finn Enke for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
