UMich faculty senate urges school to continue performing sex changes for minors
The Faculty Senate voted in favor of a resolution to restore 'gender-affirming care' at its Nov. 3 meeting.
The senate also voted against the Trump administration’s offer to participate in a compact to reform higher education.
The Faculty Senate at the University of Michigan passed a resolution at its Nov. 3 meeting that pushes the university to resume performing sex changes on minors.
The resolution argues that because “cisgender” patients receive hormone blockers, the university is discriminating against transgender-identifying individuals by refusing to give them care. The resolution does not elaborate further, but could be referring to treatments for precocious puberty, a condition in which young children go through puberty at a very early age.
The university paused “gender-affirming care” at Michigan Medicine for patients under 19 on Aug. 25, due to federal pressure. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that threatened loss of federal funding for institutions that failed to eliminate the practice.
But now, the Faculty Senate is demanding that the university reverse course. According to the resolution, the senate “reaffirms its support for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse folks and their right to comprehensive, accessible, and life-saving gender-affirming care.”
A record number of faculty members, 3,638 out of 7,808, attended the recent meeting, and an overwhelming majority supported the resolution on “gender-affirming care.” According to The Michigan Daily, 2,432 faculty members voted in favor, 555 voted against, and 651 abstained.
“We’re the leading public research university in the United States, and to an extent greater than they’ve ever done in their history, our faculty have signaled their interest in having us work with the administration to address some of the pressing problems that we collectively confront,” Senate Advisory Committee Chairman Derek Peterson told The Michigan Daily.
Other universities have decided to stop providing “gender-affirming care” for minors following President Trump’s executive order, including the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.
In addition to passing the resolution on “gender-affirming care,” Michigan’s Faculty Senate also voted to reject President Trump’s offer to participate in the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”
The separate faculty senate resolution condemns the compact for attempting to impose federal restrictions on free speech and academic integrity. It says that the compact would “require suppression of campus protest and enforcement of specific definitions of sex, gender, and gender identity.”
So far, only the University of Valley Forge has accepted the administration’s offer to participate in the compact.
Campus Reform contacted the University of Michigan and the Faculty Senate for comment, but did not receive a response before publication.
