A recent debate on transgender women drew a large audience at the University of Delaware. In our partnership with Spotlight Delaware Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Brianna Hill about the event and the criticism that it drew. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: There's been a growing flashpoint in this country over transgender rights, and the University of Delaware found itself in the middle of it. This is Don Rush. A debate took place on the campus, which looked at the definition of a woman and its implications. In a partnership with Spotlight Delaware, we talked with reporter Brianna Hill about what transpired.
HILL: Why they chose this topic to do... we haven't really gotten a response to that question, but the event was put on. UD officials essentially [were] saying it's meant to encourage open discussion in the academic setting. And then we have advocates like students who are maybe non-binary, trans, even other students who were kind of just helping to advocate and other groups saying it framed the existence and kind of legitimacy of transgender people as something to be put up for debate.
RUSH: So tell me then a little bit about the participants in this.
HILL: There were two professors present. The first one was Augustine Fuentes. He's a professor from Princeton University. And then we had Tomas Bogardus from Pepperdine University. Augustine Fuentes from Princeton; he's a biological anthropologist. He, in the past, has argued in his research that biological sex shows variation, and it cannot always be explained by a strict male female binary process. Whereas Bogardus, a philosophy professor at Pepperdine has argued that biological sex is in fact binary and it's rooted in its reproductive roles.
RUSH: So in terms of the philosophy department, I think it was the chair was talking about the idea of not treating the students as being so fragile. What about that impact?
HILL: It was Joel Pust, who is the chair of the Department of Philosophy. He was basically asserting that controversial topics are often chosen for debates. Whether they are disturbing or controversial, he thinks it's a part of the university's job to expose students to a variety of views and try to get them to think about them. The significance of this event happening when it did is that universities across the nation are kind of under the scrutiny with their DEI policies. We've seen policies come out from the federal administration about trans rights and things like that. So students and trans people are already feeling targeted in a way. So when they're hosting an event like this at a time like this, I think it brings up the question of "should they be doing it?" But then there's also the notion of free speech, so [it's] been seen as a university or a school's job to have these conversations.
RUSH: Now, you mentioned in your piece that the university president, Laura Carlson, has already been under some concern over her tenure. How does that fit into all of this?
HILL: It's connected. Since Carlson took office, the criticism mainly from what we know surrounded the changes affecting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. So them taking posters down for certain student led groups and replacing them with posters that were deemed more inclusive or changing the equity and inclusions office name. So things like that. We've seen some criticism coming down the pipeline, and this has all happened while she's taken office and she only took office recently. So we're still trying to see how her leadership of the university is going to form, and we're just waiting to see what happens next.
RUSH: Spotlight Delaware reporter Brianna Hill on the transgender debate that took place on the University of Delaware campus. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
