LGBTQ-U and the myth of the woke university

Earlier this year, Florida became the first state to ban sociology courses from the general education curriculum at public universities, declaring the discipline too “woke” to be a part of a student’s core education. It’s a trend that other states, including my home of Nebraska, are attempting to emulate. 

As a sociology professor teaching about gender and sexuality at Nebraska’s flagship state university, conservatives see my work as a part of what Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk calls “left-wing indoctrination.” For Kirk and those who share his views, conservative students need saving. They are an endangered species on America’s college campuses. 

But unlike conservative politicians, activists and Ivy League students who have penned op-eds lamenting the isolation of conservatives in higher education, those of us who teach at public institutions know conservatives are flourishing mightily here. 

Consider one telling statistic from a new survey released by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), where I am a public fellow in LGBTQ rights. While Generation Z is overall more politically progressive than any other generation, when it comes to measures of LGBTQ equality, Gen Z college students who are Republican are more conservative than Republicans of other generations. They are also more conservative than Gen Z adults who haven’t attended college.  

This makes sense given that the conservative movement obsesses over both LGBTQ issues and college campuses. At the Ohio State University stop for Turning Point USA’s national tour last year, Kirk told his audience that one of the most dangerous threats to college students today, and indeed America as a whole, was the LGBT agenda that higher education promotes. 

Turning Point USA, which encourages its chapters to become official “student groups,” is no grassroots campus organization. Between 2016 and 2022, public tax filings suggest revenues grew from just more than $4 million to nearly $80 million. It boasts its presence on more than 3,500 high school and university campuses in all 50 states. 

When it comes to who yields institutional power and influence in higher education, conservatives are largely getting their way. My university is anticipating drastic cuts to academic programs, much like West Virginia University last fall and the University of Connecticut this spring. Like Florida and other states, Nebraska’s Legislature this year is considering a bill that would eliminate tenure at my institution and another that would eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and curriculum, including potentially the courses I regularly teach.  

Despite conservatives’ claims, there is no convincing empirical evidence that professors are censoring conservative students or attempting to turn them into liberals. While it is true that college professors lean left in their politics, as Glenn Altschuler and David Wippman wrote in this publication, “Students do not come to college as empty vessels; they come with political views that are highly resistant to change.” As one PRRI survey finds, most Gen Z teens share the same political party with their parents. 

Sociology challenges conservative dogma denying the reality of social inequality, or that members of some groups are automatically positioned with greater access to privilege and resources than others. Further still, sociology teaches that the categories that conservatives see as fixed and unchanging — gender, sexuality and race, for instance — are constructed by society itself. 

My experience is not that Gen Z students automatically take up a sociological perspective on gender and sexuality, and in fact, many push back against it. Some speak out in class discussions, others in anonymous course evaluations at the end of the semester.

But many students, even some who are staunchly conservative, find value and insight from my classes and others with similar discussions. As sociologist Philip Cohen said in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Sociological research remains crucial to addressing our social problems from job discrimination to housing insecurity to social isolation.” These are problems without a political label.  

Gen Z Republicans and Democrats alike report that LGBTQ issues are important to them. According to PRRI, both groups are more likely than other Americans to vote for candidates in major elections only if they share their views about LGBTQ issues. Gen Z Democrats who attend college reflect the trend of their Republican counterparts but in the opposite direction, reporting more progressive views on LGBTQ rights than Democrats of other generations. In other words, Gen Z college students tend toward both liberal and conservative extremes on these issues.

Though a greater percentage of Gen Z adults are Democrats (about 1 in 3), an estimated 6 million say they are Republicans (about 1 in 5 from this generation). A much larger number, 43 percent or an estimated 13 million Gen Z eligible voters, say they don’t identify with either party.

It’s a conservative myth that liberal professors are trying to extinguish youth’s conservatism, but some liberals tout another myth that young people are uniformly progressive and will lead the charge of social change. Gen Z college students, like the rest of America, are politically diverse and active across conservative and liberal movements. That’s a lesson that both the right and the left would do well to remember.

Kelsy Burke is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a public fellow in LGBTQ rights for the Public Religion Research Institute. Her views are her own and do not represent her employer, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.