Obeying in Advance
By 
Three speaker events across three UK departments underwent title changes, including omitting gender, wealth and race-related wording. Some faculty members said they received edited event titles, but were unsure why they were made or where the direction to make them came from.
Identity-based event title changes signify censorship on campus, faculty members say. Instructors and staff have been advised not to speak with Kentucky Kernel reporters, and department chairs have warned them of “unforeseen consequences” for the department.
Carolyn Sachs, UK alum and professor, spoke at UK in September as part of the Sociology department’s Centennial Lecture Series Talks. Sachs’s Ph.D. thesis discusses the historical erasure of women farmers and their involvement in agriculture as landowners and contributors.
Sachs’s lecture was originally titled “Invisible, Empowered, Erased: Women Farmers Across the Globe.” According to a faculty member who requested to remain anonymous, the edited suggestion shortened the title to “Women Farmers Across the Globe,” omitting the words “invisible,” “empowered” and “erased.”
Former Sociology department chair and professor Pat Mooney introduced Sachs at the event and expressed concerns about the title change.
“The question that women farmers haven’t been recognized for their role in agriculture. I don’t know who it’s threatening to. I don’t know why it’s problematic,” Mooney said. “And so, we don’t know. We haven’t been given a list of words that are unacceptable.”
Mooney said he has been in the Sociology department for about 40 years and served as acting chair for eight years.
“I talked with (James) Hougland. He was chair for 11 years. Claire (Renzetti) was chair for 8 years. None of us have any memory of anybody wanting to restrict, change the title of a speaker’s talk,” Mooney said. “So we’re in really new turf. This is unprecedented in my experience.”
Dr. Tanya Golash-Boza’s speaker event on Oct. 7 was originally titled “Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC’s Racial Wealth Gap.” According to the anonymous faculty member, the event’s title was renamed and advertised as “DC’s Economic Disparities in Historical Context.”
Administration thinks it’s doing the right thing because it’s worried about a state legislator or an aspiring Riley Gaines clone getting wind of an event and making a messy public complaint. So you see, it’s really just administrators protecting faculty from their own worst impulses, don’t you understand? Also best not to ask any questions, because questions get messy and… difficult.