"Academic researchers condemned students’ irreverent and offensive responses to an LGBTQ survey, claiming the pushback indicates “fascist ideologues” are “living ‘inside the house’ of engineering and computer science.”
In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields. "
"The research team declared that the mockery they received “had a profound impact on morale and mental health,” particularly for one transgender researcher who was “already in therapy for anxiety and depression regarding online anti-trans rhetoric.”
The paper claimed that “managing the study’s data collection caused significant personal distress, and time had to be taken off the project to heal from traumatic harm” of having to read students’ responses in the survey.
The scholars concluded the “malicious responses” indicate that fascism has become a common ideology in engineering and computer science academia. "
"Saying the solution for the rise of fascism is to change education itself, the team wrote, “The university at its most ideal can be envisioned as ‘a central site for revolutionary struggle, a site where we can work to educate for critical consciousness’ using ‘a pedagogy of liberation.'”
It was suggested the plight of transgender citizens be used as a teachable example of “experiences with power and oppression — and that categories such as race, gender, and sexuality have roots in European colonial logics shared by fascist movements.”
Engineering in particular, they argued, is a critical field to teach their far-left ideology because such graduates “frequently work in fields such as fossil fuels, defense, construction, and technology upon graduation, and could be taught about these field’s relationships with national and global racial capitalism and ongoing apartheid in Palestine, as an example.”"