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‘Families are not social experiments,’ conservative advocate says

New York University is offering a class on transgender and queer “approaches to domesticity” for the fall 2025 semester. The course description poses the question, “Is home always cis and straight?”

One conservative advocate told The Fix the course’s content is “worse than claiming 2 + 2 = 5.”

Students will “critically engage with the norms on gender and sexuality that become an interior of many houses across time and space,” according to the course description.

“Talking about home is more than talking about the architecture of dwelling, but it is about histories of gender and sexuality, it is about physical, emotional, and affective labor, it is about norms of kin-making and defining what we mean by ‘family,’” the description states.

Further, “questions of home are not only about domesticity or the acts of dwelling, but they are about life, how we frame it, how we exist, become, and relate to space and each other,” it states.

Students will read a book titled “Fun Home” by Alison Bechdel, featuring a lesbian woman and her gay father.

“It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve,” the book description reads.

The undergraduate class is taught by Dilara Caliskan, an assistant professor, “LGBTI+ rights activist in Turkey,” and “socio-cultural anthropologist,” according to the university’s website.

“Across her activism and research, a question that drives Dilara’s work is about how studying family from trans/queer perspectives is more than focusing on gendered and sexualized ideologies of kinship; but about understanding how concepts such as time, language, and home become fused with each other as legacies of state power,” the website states.

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The College Fix reached out to Caliskan, the NYU press office, and the Gallatin School of Individualized Study for more information on the course via email in the last two weeks. None have responded.

However, President of the American Principles Project Terry Schilling told The Fix the course is “a prime example of what is wrong with Academia and Higher Education.”

“Instead of preparing college students to enter the workforce, this university is promoting woke gender ideology, while saddling its students with thousands of dollars of student loan debt,” Schilling said.

He said these institutions need to be “reformed” and he is grateful “that Secretary McMahon and President Trump are beginning that process.”

Meanwhile, John Ritchie, director of conservative group TFP Student Action, condemned the course’s content for attacking the nuclear family.

“It’s time for universities to teach the truth, not twist it. Families are not social experiments but rather the building blocks of civilization,” Ritchie said.

“To tamper with the natural order embedded in the unique roles of father, mother, and children is a gross denial of reality. It’s worse than claiming 2 + 2 = 5,” he said.

“Trans/Queer Approaches To Domestic(ity)” is not the only upcoming course at NYU that has drawn criticism.

The school is also offering a class titled “Marxism Beyond Marx” next semester, The Fix reported.

Students will study “Marxism through the intellectual traditions of people of color, people from colonized and formerly colonized places, feminists, and queer and trans people,” according to the course description.

“Considering the reading assignments, this course appears to lack any sort of intellectual diversity,” Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Jonathan Butcher told The Fix via email last month.

MORE: Harvard needs to reform. But Trump’s actions could destroy it, professor says.

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: The New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business; Maya K. Photography

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