University instructors encounter, engage, and educate a substantive percentage of the youth in the U.S. These students make purchases, engage on social media, and make up an ever increasing and central component of the voting public. 

Because young people are already shaping our society — and will for years to come — academics must resist governmental forces that seek to shut down academic inquiry and education, especially on topics related to human biological and social variation. 

For example, recent executive orders have forced humans into categories. 

In March 2025, President Trump declared race a real biological category in humans. In January 2025, Trump mandated that people whose bodies could potentially produce sperm are different kinds of human than those whose bodies could potentially produce ova.  

But thinking about humans as a biological binary — belonging to only one category at a time — overlooks extensive and robust scholarship showing the complexity of bodies, lives, and the patterns of variation in the species on the whole. 

Forcing humans into restrictive categories that do not reflect actual bodies and lives not only creates overly simple views of race and sex; it risks justifying racial inequality and creating deterministic stories about what a girl or boy, woman or man is and can be. 

In the current moment every academic has to consider both what is at stake by staying silent and what one can do to protect everyone’s right to knowledge.

I am a biological anthropologist who focuses on human biological variation. I study human bodies and lives and how we can best understand patterns of race and racism, sex and gender. 

Over the past five decades, much public discourse and federal policies have sought to draw on biological and social science to broaden our understanding of people. Today, however, both federal and state governments are seeking to narrow the public’s views about race and sex, in part by limiting academic knowledge. There are attempts to shut down academic departments, control content in courses, and remove scholarship focusing on race- and sex-related data and analyses. 

At the same time, governments are introducing policies that incorporate the very falsehoods and erroneous assertions the scholarship refutes. 

With these threats not only to academic freedom but to public knowledge, scholars have a responsibility to ensure their research is widely — and accurately — disseminated. 

The classroom is an ideal location to dismantle misinformation and develop and encourage critical thinking about human biological diversity, societal dynamics, and histories. Many academic disciplines engage data, analyses and knowledge sets that repudiate and rectify many myths being perpetuated in the current landscape of disinformation. 

Knowledge is power, but only if the public has access to it and uses it. 

Race Is Real, but It’s Not Biological

There is a long history of researchers manipulating and deploying data and analyses to bolster factually false assertions about human biology and its relations to human society. 

In one example, a recent New York Times essay highlighted how, over the past decade, a group of researchers — some at academic institutions, others at private foundations, and a few who identified as freelance — worked around safeguards at the National Institutes of Health, gaining access to study data including genetic and other information from thousands of children. 

The researchers manipulated and misrepresented those data to produce at least 16 papers purporting to show biological support for differences in intelligence between races; ranking of ethnicity via I.Q. scores; and assertions about the inferior nature of some groups relative to others in the workplace.

Consistent, peer-reviewed scientific studies of human biological variation in biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, ethnic studies and others demonstrate that categories of race or continental ancestry are not biological units. 

The general public might come across these studies and perceive them as legitimate. Indeed, the students had a wide impact across social media platforms, podcasts, and blogs, and even landed in some mainstream news.

But how the researchers conducted the studies, what conclusions they drew, and where they published their so-called findings would give most academics pause.

 The point is that these researchers did not follow the actual data and analyses; rather, they misrepresented the findings and constructed analyses not supported by the real data. From a scientific standpoint, their conclusions are not just wrong; they are wildly inaccurate descriptions of human biology.  

Consistent, peer-reviewed scientific studies of human biological variation in biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, ethnic studies and others demonstrate that categories of race or continental ancestry are not biological units. 

As the biologist Joseph Graves Jr. says, “When we use the term race in the biological sense, there’s no scientific support for such groups existing.” 

Neither genetics, nor skin color, nor hair types, nor protein structures, nor any specific character of human biology differentiates one or more of the so-called race categories as unique and distinct from other clusters of humans. 

Similarly, gender is a critical part of every human life, but it’s neither simply a correlate of one’s biology nor something totally separate from one’s body.  

The extent and impact of the researchers’ manipulation of knowledge demonstrate why academics must be especially attentive to the misuse and misrepresentation of data and analyses. For the most part, the general public hasn’t been trained to distinguish scientific best practices from specious methods that point in misleading directions.

The task of explaining and clarifying science can be especially challenging when situations are nuanced. In the case of race, reputable studies repeatedly demonstrate that no specific genetic or other biological patterns in our species support racial classifications. Rather, race is a historical, social, and lived experience. 

In other words, race is not biological, yet race is real. The two facts are not contradictory. It is the responsibility of academics to explain why.  

Sex and Gender Are Intertwined

Similarly, gender is a critical part of every human life, but it’s neither simply a correlate of one’s biology nor something totally separate from one’s body.  

Instead, scientific and historical data and analyses clearly demonstrate that sex and gender are intertwined as core facets of human biology and society. While reproductive physiology is biological, most human biological variation is not distributed in a binary, meaning that there are not only two distinct types of people in the world.

In addition, not all humans fit biologically into the categories of “female” or “male.” There is a range of  biological variations when it comes to genitals, genes, gonads (testes and ovaries), hormone levels and many other aspects of human biology.  

So, someone who appears to be typical female or male is not just a person with a particular biology. Instead, people navigate norms and societal expectations for behavior and appearance, as well as express their identities as individuals. 

While these variations most often come in clusters we can call typical male and female, there are also tens of millions of humans whose bodies — be it genetics, genes, hormones, etc. — do not fit neatly into the typical clustering. These humans are a part of the range of variation in our species and to deny their existence and their full rights as human beings is both unscientific and inhumane.  

The reality of this variation is that females and males are not the same, nor are they opposites or distinct kinds of human, and not all humans fit biologically into those categories. 

Humans also have gender. Gender is the contextualized social and structural experiences framed by sociocultural systems (societies and cultures) that include norms and societal expectations for behavior and appearance as well as individual expressions of identity expectations and experiences. Thus, gender as a lived reality is a critical part of every human life.

So, someone who appears to be typical female or male is not just a person with a particular biology. Instead, people navigate norms and societal expectations for behavior and appearance, as well as express their identities as individuals. 

The biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling reminds us that “few aspects of adult behavior, emotions, [sexual orientation], or identity can be sourced purely to sex or purely to gender.”

When Science Is Misrepresented, What Should Academics Do?

Data, analyses, the very science about sex and gender – as well as race – are being misused and misrepresented in key U.S. scientific health institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, as well as the executive branch itself. These projects have largely been supported by well-funded, private entities such as the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Trump’s recent executive orders directly echo the work of researchers paid for by these institutions. They also put mainstream professors at risk for being in direct conflict with governmental policy by simply teaching basic content in their discipline. 

The serious question for the academy right now is: How can we lean in to defend the academy, and society, rather than capitulate and close up shop? 

Keeping quiet or limiting one’s research should not be an option. It’s urgent for  academics to identify specious science through publications, symposiums, and professional organization statements, and to clarify what data and analyses have been manipulated. 

It’s time for us to stand up and speak out. We must take overt action against the misrepresentation of data, analyses, and understandings that academics work so hard to produce.

However, it’s just as important for the public to be made aware of the specific misuse and misrepresentation of data and analyses. It’s one thing for a researcher to publish an article with false assertions about race and IQ, or to misrepresent patterns of human biological variation with sex and gender categories and capacities. It’s something quite different when those false assertions become governmental policy and policymakers use them to seek to legislate classroom content. 

Academic knowledge is not confined to the classroom and academic publications. We can also write and speak outside of those venues. Editorials, public lectures, blog posts, podcasts, and social media engagements are all avenues open to academics who wish to contribute to the public dialogue. 

It’s time for us to stand up and speak out. We must take overt action against the misrepresentation of data, analyses, and understandings that academics work so hard to produce.

Taking a stand is critical to maintain academic freedom and integrity. In the current moment every academic has to consider both what is at stake by staying silent and what one can do to protect everyone’s right to knowledge.