Republicans condemn university's masculinity program as a 'war on men'

With the University of Wisconsin facing the latest in a series
of political attacks, educational advocates fear ‘a chilling effect
on academic freedom’

Edward Helmore
Monday 9 January 2017 17.01 GMT

Educational watchdogs are warning that newly emboldened Republican leaderships at the state level are ramping up pressure on universities to curb programs they claim “advance the politically correct agenda of liberal administrators and staff”.

The latest row over academic freedom erupted at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in December when a Republican state senator, Steve Nass, launched an attack on the chancellor and regents over an undergraduate program on masculinity that Nass claims “declares war on men”.

The latest assault follows threats from conservative Wisconsin legislators last month to cut funds from the university for offering a course on race relations titled The Problem of Whiteness.

Last July, lawmakers threatened to cut the University of Wisconsin System’s budget over an “obscene” course reading assignment about gay men’s sexual preferences that was required as part of a sociology course titled Problems of American Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

In the most recent salvo in the long war between the university and state lawmakers over academic freedom, Nass said in an email to the Capital Times: “Our friends at UW Madison, not happy enough with labeling ‘whiteness’ as a societal problem, now are attacking another societal ill … men and their masculinity.”

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