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University said it is complying with state ban, but comptroller and attorney general office remain skeptical

Indiana University and the state’s attorney general and comptroller remain at odds over the school’s compliance with a law that requires it to cease funding the Kinsey Institute.

While the university provided some answers to an inquiry, the comptroller’s office is still waiting for more answers, a media representative told The College Fix last week.

“We disagree with the assertion that the university has worked diligently and transparently to confirm compliance with Indiana law for the reasons noted in our initial correspondence, and further stated here,” Attorney General Todd Rokita (pictured, right) and Comptroller Elise Nieshalla (pictured, left) wrote in a letter on Oct. 8. Nieshalla’s office shared a copy of the letter with The Fix. No response has been received in the past month to this letter.

The think tank, named for Alfred Kinsey, remains controversial because of the methods used to support his research, including relying on the journal of a child rapist. The think tank also developed an app for people across the world to log their sexual experiences.

The letter asks for further information on repayment of state funds used at the think tank since July 2023, when the law went into effect.

The letter also questioned plans to move the institute off campus, as required to comply with the law. IU previously considered creating a separate entity to administer the Kinsey Institute, although it was never clear how a public university running an organization would comply with a ban on state funding.

The Fix previously estimated that the Kinsey Institute would need to spend around $4,000 per month to rent office space in Bloomington to accommodate its staff. The university said there is no agreement in its records indicating Kinsey Institute pays rent for its on-campus office space. The Fix had filed a public records request seeking information on the arrangement. Kinsey Institute staffers use IU email addresses, suggesting the school is still providing other benefits to the think tank.

In response to a Fix inquiry about compliance with the ban, the Kinsey Institute referred to Indiana University’s statement from April 2023: “IU will conduct a thorough legal review to ensure the university follows state law. The university is committed to the ongoing crucial research and robust scholarship conducted by IU faculty and the Kinsey Institute.”

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IU had responded in August to the state’s questions, saying the institute was currently funding itself without outside gifts and was working on an audit to ensure compliance.

In a response letter dated August 29, IU stated that it “worked diligently and transparently to comply with the statute.”

The letter indicates that IU submitted an accounting plan to the Indiana State Board of Accounts in March of 2024. This plan included supplying supplementary financial statements from the Kinsey Institute that detail the direct and indirect costs associated with the institute.

The university is also “Isolating the Kinsey Institute’s financial accounts from all other financial accounts at Indiana University” and “Creating an additional level of approval authority at Indiana University outside the Kinsey Institute for transactions involving the Kinsey Institute’s financial accounts.” The university is also “Blocking the transfer of any non-approved funding to the Kinsey Institute’s financial accounts.”

Since the statute had been put in place, the Kinsey Institute wrote that it only received funding through “gift funding, research and grant funding, auxiliary income, [and] other externally sourced revenue.”

The National Association of Scholars said the state needs to ensure the ban goes into effect.

“Universities will almost always find a way to achieve their internal objectives, legislation be damned,” spokesman Chance Layton told The Fix via email.

Ideally, the institute would be receptive to the orders of the state legislators and follow those through, according to Teresa Manning, also with NAS. “The Indiana Attorney General should seek to close it and the University should sever any and all ties with it,” Manning, a former Health and Human Services official in the Trump administration, told The Fix via a media statement.

A most pressing worry about the Kinsey Institute’s work is that “it is not…valid scientific research,” according to Manning.

“Instead, it promotes ideology – specifically, sexual hedonism – and vice (sexual indulgence and use of others as objects),” Manning said. “Under this ideology, individuals lose the capacity to govern themselves and therefore also the capacity for virtuous citizenship.”

By contrast, “real scientific research would help prevent cancer, for example, or autism or Alzheimer’s, conditions which afflict a growing number of Americans to devastating effect.”

“Given the pressing need for research in areas such as these, the Kinsey Institute is grossly wasteful at best and utterly malignant at worst.”

Editor’s note: Manning’s quote has been updated to include her fuller comments and clarity.

MORE: IU all in on weird sex research center

IMAGES: House of Representatives; Elise Nieshalla/X

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