The latest assault on academic freedom came early in 2026 when Texas A&M University in the USA moved to close its women’s and gender studies program following the firing of a faculty member for classroom content on gender identity. New College of Florida, Wichita State University (Kansas), and Towson University (Maryland) also closed women and gender studies programs. The field of women and gender studies traces its origins to the 1960s- and 1970s-women’s liberation and resistance movement. These departments and programs remain vulnerable under the current Trump administration and other states like Texas are implementing similar polices limiting classroom discussions on “race or gender ideology”.

Simultaneously, qualitative inquiry—particularly feminist, interpretive, and critical—is often characterised as suspicious; accused of being rooted in ideology therefore lacking scholarly credentials, not worthy of academic stature—a threat. Women and Gender Studies and qualitative inquiry are not simply aligned; they are co-implicated. Those who contest critical race theory and intersectionality, race, gender, and ethnic studies, and reproductive autonomy are also challenging how knowledge is generated, whose accounts are trusted, which methods and theories matter, and whose stories fill the narrative landscape. This assault on Women and Gender studies is also an assault on interpretive and embodied knowledge, and relational ways of being and knowing.

Join us on April 1^st, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. EST, (12 noon CST, 11:00 a.m. MST, 10:00 a.m. PST, 8:00 p.m. UK) for the second in our series of Qualitative Inquiry in this Moment with Dr. Heidi Lewis, the immediate past President of the National Women’s Studies Association. Her work is primarily focused on feminism (emphasis Black feminism) in this session she shares a feminist analysis, current research and insights on Women and Gender Studies and how we might resist, navigate, and defend this work in the changing political landscape. The session will open with the reading of feminist poetry in the African diasporic tradition of call and response. Our two poetry readers are Tiffani Kelly PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Oklahoma and Victoria Obeng MA candidate in Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. This online webinar will provide an opportunity to hear about Dr. Lewis’ work in this area and to ask questions. To register please CLICK HERE.

Dr. Heidi R. Lewis is David & Lucile Packard Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies, Inaugural Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Gender & Women’s Studies, Series Editor of Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and immediate past President of the National Women’s Studies Association. Her work is primarily focused on Feminism (emphasis Black Feminism), Hip Hop (emphasis Rap), and Media Studies. Along with several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and public-facing articles written for New Black Man, The Feminist Wire, Ms., and other publications, she is the co-editor of In Audre’s Footsteps: Transnational Kitchen Table Talk (edition assemblage, 2021) with Dana Asbury and Jazlyn Andrews. Her most recent project, Make Rappers Rap Again!: Interrogating the Mumble Rap “Crisis” (August 2025), is the first to be published in the Oxford University Press Theorizing African American Music Series.