7th October 2024
CCINDLE expresses its solidarity with the Italian GIFTS network, which connects researchers on Gender, Intersex, Feminist, Transfeminist, and Sexuality studies in an often hostile environment. Researchers from the University of Roma Tre are being targeted for harassment by anti-gender groups including ProVita e Famiglia, with political support from senior politicians protesting the ‘ideological madness’ of their study on gender-creative childhood. CCINDLE stands with academic freedom, and is proud to share the GIFTS statement in full below:
GIFTS (Italian network of studies on Gender, Intersex, Feminist, Transfeminist, and Sexuality Studies) supports academic freedom – English version [Italian original version at this link]
In solidarity with the participatory research study with gender-creative kids at the University of Roma Tre
A violent attack is currently taking place against a research group from the University of Roma Tre engaged in a study on gender-creative childhood. This research, approved by the University Ethics Committee and, importantly, that is not publicly funded, has been targeted by organizations such as “RadFem Italia” and “ProVita e Famiglia”. These organizations disseminated unfounded information, misleading articles, smear social media campaigns, and also circulated the names of involved researchers, exposing them to hate campaigns and spreading a climate of fear among the families which voluntarily joined the research. This attack was welcome and relaunched at the political level: the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, Fabio Rampelli, declared his intention to initiate a parliamentary enquiry so that the Minister of Universities and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, would intervene on what Rampelli calls “ideological madness.”
We, as GIFTS network of scholars, working either in academia or as independent researchers of Gender, Intersex, Feminist, Transfeminist, and Sexuality studies, openly and firmly condemn the illiberal drift aimed at limiting autonomy and freedom of academic research, guaranteed by Articles 9 and 33 of our Constitution.
Research is and must be free of any political and institutional pressure; it is and must be free, independent and based on scientific evidence, not on ideological beliefs aiming to erase existences and experiences. Factual reality cannot bend to the biased political view of any political faction.
Researchers must be able to work in a peaceful atmosphere, without fearing attacks, media pillories, intrusions into private lives and political instrumentalizations. In this sense, marginalized people who do research, in particular trans* precarious researchers, are subject to an additional stress factor and concrete job consequences.
We, as GIFTS network, express all our support and solidarity to the fellow researchers targeted by this attack.
The episode taking place at the University Roma Tre is not an isolated event. Rather, it is part of a more general cultural and political climate of systematic attack on the lives of trans* and nonbinary people, particularly children and adolescents, involving a series of events, such as the inspection at Careggi Hospital in Florence.
This latest event, moreover, confirms not only how transphobic and overtly hostile the cultural, social, and political climate is to the LGBTIQIA+ community. It also showcases clearly that strong attempts are being made to control research centers and universities in the development of knowledge.
For this reason, as GIFTS network, we hope that the entire academic community will decide to respond in a united way to this dangerous and violent interference of politics, expressing its solidarity with the Roma Tre research group, with respect to which the Rector of the University has issued two press releases.
Academia cannot remain silent or complicit before this attack: it is in fact called upon to strongly defend academic freedom, as well as the necessity and legitimacy of gender and sexuality studies, and to take action so as to create the necessary conditions to allow trans* and queer knowledge to develop without undue interference.