IU Vice Provost for Finance Aimee Heeter (left) and Director of the Kinsey Institute Justin Garcia (right) responded to most of the questions and input on behalf of the working group during last week's listening sessions.
(Ethan Sandweiss / WFIU-WTIU)
An IU working group hosted public listening sessions last week on the future of the Kinsey Institute’s relationship with the University. Indiana lawmakers voted last spring to block state funds from the institute, which studies human sexuality, gender and relationships.
Now, the university is looking to maintain compliance, ideally while satisfying Kinsey stakeholders.
The working group of nine members comprises administrators, the IU Foundation and Kinsey-affiliated faculty is hosting five listening sessions. Three last week were open to the IU community.
The group will synthesize feedback from these sessions to create suggestions for university leadership and the Board of Trustees.
While the conversation remained civil, emotions ran high. Several faculty expressed distrust in university leadership and the proceedings, while some graduate students shared that they would not have come to IU if they had known how the university would respond to the state’s budget amendment.
The administration says turning Kinsey into a nonprofit is no longer the only option being considered.
While the university says none of Kinsey’s budget comes from state appropriations, an accounting solution is necessary to ensure IU remains compliant. The university has said in the past that separating the Kinsey administration from the university as a 501(c)(3) would satisfy the new budget restrictions and protect Kinsey from state interference, but it hasn’t explained how.
Critics of the separation plan say that it would do more than is necessary to comply with state law and signals that the university is reluctant to stand behind its researchers.
Professor of history Judith Allen asked group member and Vice Provost of Finance Aimee Heeter: “Have you had anybody tell you a good reason for that division?”
Heeter responded that the 501(c)(3) plan was just one option being considered, but Allen persisted, asking the vice provost six times whether she had been given a justification. “It doesn’t have to make sense,” she said. “I just want to know if anybody’s articulated one.”
"I do not have an answer on that one,” Heeter said.
Then, Kinsey Assistant Director for Education Jessica Hille asked whether creating a nonprofit just for Kinsey administration might put the university out of compliance in other ways. A 501(c)(3) has to engage in exempt work such as charitable causes, education and research, and Hille said administrative functions aren’t included under that umbrella.
Again, the group was unable to provide an answer.
Staff and researchers feel unsafe
Attendees who work at Kinsey, including Director of the Kinsey Institute Justin Garcia, described proliferating misinformation about Kinsey research since the amendment passed and growing threats against the lives of its affiliates.
“Not only is this an unprecedented situation, the faculty and staff and students at the institute have suffered indescribable harassment,” Garcia said.
Many of those present said the university had done little to defend them or their reputations.
Researcher Amanda Gesselman said she’s no longer able to conduct surveys without participants commenting that the Institute is full of perverts.
“What concrete steps are you going to take now to instill confidence in the research community that you’re not going to allow our programs to be damaged because of outside opinions?” she asked.
President Pamela Whitten has said she firmly supports the Kinsey Institute and its mission, but the university has not publicly rebutted rumors accusing researchers of child sex abuse.
Garcia said the institute is quite secure from physical threats but some attendees worried that moving Kinsey off campus would lose the advantage of IU security.
Kinsey Collections require special care
The Institute was founded in 1947 largely to protect Alfred Kinsey’s vast collections. In addition to sex-oriented artwork, publications and artifacts, the collection contains tens of thousands of surveys and interviews providing insights into the sex lives of ordinary Americans.
Archivists and researchers at the listening session emphasized that the collections are one-of-a-kind not just for their scale but also for their curation.
The university said in November that if Kinsey were separated from the university, its collections would remain at IU “in service of” the institute. But as Allen expressed, the archives require the expertise of Kinsey staff and cohesion to be useful to researchers.
“What Kinsey does is curate it all together so that it makes sense, and the different media interact with each other. There’s nothing like that in the world,” she said. “If you add that into the general IU collections, that disappears.”
Heeter assured Allen that there has been no discussion of breaking up the Kinsey Collections, although the future custodianship of those collections has not been settled.
What we have learned
The stated goal of the listening sessions is to gather input, not necessarily to provide answers. But members of the working group did provide several pieces of information that hadn’t previously been public.
Garcia said he has met with President Whitten twice, on his request.
There has not been any discussion of breaking up the Kinsey Collections, according to Heeter.
Likewise, Garcia said transferring the institute to another university is “not an option we want to explore.”
This Friday, a fourth listening session will take place in New York City for the Kinsey Institute International Advisory Council, and a fifth for donors and alumni will take place the following Friday.
The working group will present suggestions to the trustees and administration next month.
