Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities are both incubators of feminist awakening and contested ground in the struggle over equity, inclusion and the freedom to learn.

Two Mass Shootings, Two Countries—and Two Very Different Responses

PUBLISHED 12/18/2025 by

On Dec. 14, 2025, two tragedies unfolded on opposite sides of the world—each marked by gun violence and grief, yet met with starkly different national responses.

On the first night of Hanukkah, a gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney, turned into horror when a father and son opened fire during a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration, killing 15 people and wounding 40 in what Australian authorities called an antisemitic terrorist attack. 

The day before in Providence, R.I., a shooter opened fire at Brown University during finals, killing two students and wounding nine.

These shootings—one at a beloved public beach, the other on an Ivy League campus—expose not only shared grief but radically different understandings of responsibility.

What 200 Gen Z Women Told Me About Birth Control Should Alarm Every Woman in America

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.

So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?

Greg Abbott Vows to Put Turning Point USA Chapters in All Texas Schools

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Texas has officially launched a partnership with Turning Point USA—an organization that advocates for far-right, conservative politics co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk—to create chapters on every high school and college campus in the state. 

But petitions calling for the removal of Turning Point chapters in public schools across the country have emerged, and higher education faculty in Texas are facing harassment thanks to the organization’s watchlist targeting instructors it claims have views contrary to Turning Point’s.

Although conservatives praise TPUSA as a champion of free speech, critics say that the group not only targets LGBTQ+ people, women, people of color and educators, but that Abbott and Patrick are focusing on the wrong issues.

“Do you know what I’d like to see on every high school campus in Texas? Water fountains without lead in them. Qualified, certified teachers in every classroom. Gun safety measures that would make sure our kids came home at the end of the day,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “Instead, the governor and lieutenant governor are directing their resources and the entire state apparatus to put their fingers on the scale for one organization while fighting tooth and nail to keep others off campus.”

“Gov. Abbott praises clubs like these as champions of ‘religious freedom’ and ‘free speech,’ yet in the same breath, he targets student groups he disagrees with,” said Felicia Martin, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network.

My Daughter Was in the Mass Shooting at Brown, and I Wasn’t Trained for What to Do

PUBLISHED 12/16/2025 by

The text, from a fellow ER doctor and former Brown University faculty member, arrived at 4:27 p.m. on Saturday: “Active shooter near Brown engineering building? Is Hannah ok?” Within seconds, I looked on my phone for my daughter’s location—she was on campus in Friedman Hall. I texted her. It was real. There was an active shooter. She was hiding in a bathroom with her four best friends. For the next 24 hours, I lived every parent’s nightmare while learning hard lessons about a reality even I was not trained for.

As an emergency medicine physician with over 20 years of experience, I’ve operated from positions of information and authority in mass casualties before. This weekend, I had neither. I was simply a mother trying to keep my daughter safe from 150 miles away, armed only with a phone and whatever guidance I could piece together. I want to share what I learned, because on Saturday, thousands of students were in lockdown texting their anxious parents, and I realized how unprepared we are for this side of the experience.

bell hooks Taught Us to Imagine Freedom. Universities Are Forcing Us to Fight for It.

PUBLISHED 12/15/2025 by

On the day bell hooks became an ancestor, four years ago today, my beloved friend, comrade and co-conspirator Black feminist sociologist Shawn McGuffey and I were consoling one another over text when he wrote, “We should do something.” “Say less,” I replied.

We had institutional support from Northeastern University at a time when universities and other institutions were publicly and ceremoniously committing to funding DEI related initiatives in the tidal wave of so-called racial reckoning that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The first symposium took place two months later on a cold and clear February morning in 2022. This annual gathering became an important tradition that we looked forward to each year.

This week, we mark four years since the woman born Gloria Jean Watkins, a Black feminist writer, academic, professor and activist became an ancestor. But in 2026, there will be no bell hooks symposium at my university. Due to university wide fiscal austerity, we will not mark the anniversary this year in any official way. It is a tremendous loss, for our students and for our community locally, nationally and internationally.

As I grappled with my own grief over this loss, I had to also reflect deeply about what it means to be a Black feminist scholar in the academy today.

Trump’s Anti-Diversity Crusade Claims Two Campus Magazines

PUBLISHED 12/11/2025 by

I recently discovered two glossy magazines published by and for young people: Alice, which focuses on fashion, beauty, personal health, wellness and lifestyle; and Nineteen Fifty-Six, which brings a Black cultural lens to coverage of news, style and the arts.

Both are student-run publications housed at the University of Alabama. And on any other day, they would make one think the future of journalism look very bright indeed. Except that the sole reason I found these magazines at all is because they are now officially suspended. Last week, campus officials announced their permanent shuttering. Yet another casualty of the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech and public higher education—all in the name of stamping out supposed diversity, equity and inclusion.

Keeping Score: 137 Women Are Killed by Partners or Family Per Day; Bipartisan Push for Epstein Files; Trans Day of Remembrance and Native Women’s Equal Pay Day

PUBLISHED 12/9/2025 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—137 women and girls are killed by intimate partners or family members every day.
—Congress votes overhwlemingly to force the Justice Department to release their Epstein files.
—Donald Trump snaps at women journalists: “Quiet, piggy” and “you are an obnoxious—a terrible, actually a terrible reporter.”
—Violence against trans women remains high.
—DACA recipients are being targeted and detained under the Trump administration.
—Higher-income college students often receive more financial support than they need, while low-income students struggle.
—Tierra Walker died from preeclampsia in Texas after being repeatedly denied an abortion.
—Viola Ford Fletcher died at age 111. She was the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. 
—North Dakota’s total abortion ban was reinstated after the state’s Supreme Court reversed a temporary injunction from a lower court. There are now 13 states with total bans.

… and more.

Toward More Connected, Caring and Equitable Online Classrooms: Groundbreaking Anthology Advances Feminist Approaches to Remote Teaching

PUBLISHED 12/8/2025 by

An exciting new anthology, Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online synthesizes decades of experience and pushes forward dynamic conversations about feminist pedagogy and remote learning, offering a meaningful and much-needed contribution to this area of research and teaching.

Overall, the collection strives to explore how online education can “align more thoughtfully with intersectional feminism and practices of social justice education.”

Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online, in print and as an electronic book, was preceded by the FeministsTeach.org website. The website went viral in August 2020 when large numbers of college professors were grappling with how to teach online. Two of the anthology’s coeditors compiled resources for colleagues at the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University for online teaching.

Seventy Years After Rosa Parks’ Arrest: How We Commit to Carrying the Work Forward

PUBLISHED 12/5/2025 by

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!

This week:
—The 2025 elections prove that voters across the country want women as their leaders.
—Democratic leaders are exploring ranked-choice voting for the 2028 presidential primaries.
—In a Tennesee special election, Democratic nominee Aftyn Behn surpassed electoral expectations for her congressional district.
—Fort Collins, Colo., elected Emily Francis as mayor in its first use of ranked-choice voting.
—College student Any Lucía López Belloza was deported in Massachusetts on her way home to Texas for Thanksgiving.

… and more.

The Politics of ‘Audit’: How Texas Is Using Bureaucracy to Erase Gender Studies

PUBLISHED 11/11/2025 by , , and | UPDATED 11/14/2025 at 10:27 A.M. PT

Professor Melissa McCoul was dismissed in September after teaching LGBTQ+ themes in her children’s literature course at Texas A&M. Just this week, a faculty council determined McCoul’s firing violated her academic freedom.

But politicians and activists who oppose what they call “woke gender ideology,” are galvanized and doubling down, using this Texas A&M case to push for curricular reviews aimed at eliminating women’s, gender and sexuality studies from public colleges and universities across Texas.

Framed as bureaucratic oversight, conservatives seek to eliminate gender studies and related fields through procedural mechanisms that evade public scrutiny. The assaults on gender studies in Texas are not just a local issue; they are a national bellwether. They signal a coordinated effect to dismantle feminist and queer inquiry and remind us that silence, in the face of repression, is complicity.