Campus Reform reports that the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is hosting the event, which will highlight papers from "trans studies and scholars affiliated with Big Ten institutions." The paper submission form encourages scholars and students from any background of study to submit proposals if the research “meaningfully engages trans studies.”
One of the symposium's goal is to equip students against “authoritarian efforts” to “eradicate trans life.” As the submission reads, “Trans studies today is a dynamic field, growing rapidly even as its interventions and practitioners are increasingly under threat.”
This is the second event in a three-year project funded by Big Ten Academic Alliance to strengthen transgender studies in universities. The Big Ten promised $30,000 in grants to this effort in 2024, and the first event was last year with a book manuscript workshop hosted by the University of Minnesota. Next year, Penn State University will hold the third event, a pedagogy and curriculum forum.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance is a successful model of collaboration between various research universities. There are 18 member universities including the following: Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Northwestern, Rutgers, Ohio State, Southern California, among multiple others.
Laurie Higgins is a culture-education writer at Breakthrough Ideas.
"It's not a symposium intended to look at trans issues objectively. It's clearly soliciting papers that already assume and affirm a certain set of assumptions that haven't yet been proved," says Higgins.
Because these are public institutions, Higgins says that, in reality, the general public is paying for this symposium.
"Not one penny of public money should go to any organization like the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Not one penny of taxpayer money should be going to fund a leftist ideology that actually is damaging children, teens, young adults, and all of society," states Higgins.
Higgins points out that symposium promoters seeking to oppose the efforts to "eradicate trans life" means that they are worried conservatives may be making inroads in defeating the ideology.
