The (Un)Restricted Knowledge Speaker Series: Bodies and Rights Under Attack

US-based researchers have faced increasing restrictions on their ability to conduct and present research on the United States. The Trump administration has frozen, blocked, or cut billions of dollars in federal  grants that supported research in the social sciences, natural sciences, and the humanities. Several universities and their supporters have stated that this suspension of funding, along with other policies seeking to restrict DEI programs and student admission criteria, will restrict the scope and the nature of the research that they can conduct.

 

The Centre for the Study of the United States launched “The (Un)Restricted Knowledge Speaker Series” to highlight the research conducted by CSUS affiliates and the larger community of scholars that study the United States at the University of Toronto on topics that had become increasingly difficult for U.S. based researchers to discuss.

 

 

The rights of women and LGBTQ+ have been continuously questioned in the United States, with significant periods of expansion and contraction. With the election of Donald Trump, the US has entered a new period of retrenchment of reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections. Internationally, the Trump administration has reinstated and expanded the global gag rule and drastically reduced international family planning funding. Domestically, he has declared the US government only recognizes two sexes, terminated grants funding LGBTQ+ research, and ordered federal agencies to eliminate all reference to gender identity from their websites.

 

The fourth panel of our series, "Bodies and Rights Under Attack," featured University of Toronto scholars Michael Donnelly (Munk School/Political Science), Jessica Fields (Health and Society), Jen Gilbert (Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning), and Lance McCready (OISE), who examined how policy shapes lived experiences of sexuality, gender, health, and belonging. Their work sheds light on the critical importance of research on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ communities during a time when federal policies are actively restricting bodily autonomy, gender recognition, and access to healthcare and education.

 

 

Dr. Lance T. McCready is the lead researcher for the Making Spaces Lab and an Associate Professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and Director (Interim) of the Transitional Year Programme at University of Toronto. His research explores education, health and the well-being of Black men, boys and queer youth in urban communities and schools. He is the author of Making Space for Diverse Masculinities published by Peter Lang and is Principal Investigator of the Black Student University Access Network and Restorative Justice African, Caribbean, Black Family Group Conferencing Project. He is the 2018 recipient of the Distinguished Research Scholar Award from the Ontario Education Research Symposium.

 

Michael Donnelly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Munk School. He is the Director of Professional Master’s Programs at the Munk School. His research and teaching focus on issues at the intersection of public opinion and public policy in North America and Europe. He asks questions about what people think about welfare states, immigration policies, and their relationship, and studies how these preferences, in turn, shape policy outputs. Michael came to U of T in 2014 from the European University Institute, where he worked following his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He recently published a book on regional and ethnic inequalities as determinants of welfare state support and an SSHRC-funded project on the effect of interest groups on support for immigration.

 

Jessica Fields is Vice-Dean Faculty Affairs, Equity & Success in the Office of the Vice-Principal Academic & Dean and Professor of Health Studies at University of Toronto Scarborough. Fields’ research focus on racialized and gendered discourses of vulnerability and risk. In studies of high school communities, middle school classrooms, and jail-based HIV education, she explores the ways discourse curtails and produces sexual health education’s gendered and racialized lessons about the array of relationships, identities, desires, and behaviors that people imagine and pursue for themselves and others. With Laura Mamo, Nancy Lesko, and Jen Gilbert, Fields leads The Beyond Bullying Project (funded by the Ford Foundation), a community-based storytelling project that interrogates policymaking that challenge perceptions of LGBTQ sexualities and youth as problems and consider what is required for sexual health education to open up to the uncertainty, discomfort, and pleasure of learning from and about LGBTQ sexuality and lives. Fields is also the author of Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality (Rutgers University Press), an ethnography of community responses to state legislation requiring school-based health education to promote abstinence until marriage.

 

Dr. Jen Gilbert is Professor and Chair of the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning (CTL). Dr. Gilbert’s scholarship and teaching explores the experiences of LGBTQ+ students, teachers, and families in schools and the history of controversies over sex education in schools. Dr. Gilbert's work is international in scope and she has established a strong research partnership network in both the U.S. and Australia. She is an active public scholar and designs projects that explores the connections of social equity and education.