The College Fix

Catholic university continues to build on its Women’s and Gender Studies Program

Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic University in the United States, is hiring a transgender studies professor for its Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Department of English, prompting some criticism.

The job listing is for an “Assistant Professor in Transgender Studies Approaches to Literatures, Media, and Cultures of the Global South.” The listing requests a candidate that researches anti-colonialism, transnational or diasporic cultures, or migrants and migration.

The new position comes after the private, Washington D.C.-based institution began allowing “gender-inclusive” dorm options last fall. Campus leaders also allow students to change their name and preferred gender pronouns.

This hiring will build on Georgetown’s large contingent of English professors who have a focus on topics regarding race or gender.

Out of 37 listed full-time English faculty on Georgetown’s website, 13 have an academic focus on race or critical race theory, and 12 have an academic focus on feminist, queer, gender, or disability studies. Additionally, the Women’s and Gender Studies program has 19 dedicated faculty.

John Ritchie, director of TFP Student Action, a Catholic group dedicated to “pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-God ideals,” said he believes the new job is inappropriate for a Catholic institution.

“Georgetown has been heading away from God for some time,” he said, adding that a transgender studies professor would “twist” biology.

When asked what’s specifically wrong with a Catholic university having a program that disseminates transgender ideology, he told The College Fix in an interview that “it is sinful to offer a program that directly offends God and goes against His teaching.”

He said that gender ideology contradicts Catholicism “because Catholic teaching is clear: God created us male and female. That reality is good and self-evident. Therefore, the denial of one’s biological sex assigned by God is morally wrong. … A woman cannot claim she is a man, and a man cannot claim he is a woman.”

He said such studies fuel “the transgender revolution,” may “lead more students in the wrong direction,” and increase “body mutilations, destroy families, and generate chaos and confusion.”

“The acceptance of transgenderism at a Catholic university highlights a profound apostasy within souls,” he said. “When Catholic higher education separates itself from God, the source of all wisdom, it loses the ability to understand the highest causes of things.”

The Georgetown Office of Strategic Communications and the Georgetown Women’s and Gender Studies Program did not respond to The College Fix’s requests for comment.

According to a 2023 report in Georgetown Voice student newspaper, “the history of LGBTQ+ activism at Georgetown is long and complex.”

“In 1980, Georgetown rejected calls for an officially recognized LGBTQ+ student group. The students filed a lawsuit against the university, beginning a nearly 10-year legal battle for formal recognition. The students won the court battle in 1987 and established the ‘Gay People of Georgetown,’ which later became GU Pride,” the newspaper reported.

“In the early 2000s, a string of violent hate crimes against LGBTQ+ students compelled GU Pride and a coalition of student organizations to demand the university provide better support for queer students. In response, Georgetown established the LGBTQ Resource Center in August 2008,” it added.

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