Stakeholders offer Kinsey compliance recommendation ahead of IU trustees’ decision
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana University trustees are expected to vote Friday on a plan meant to bring the school in compliance with a 2023 state law that bars it from using state funds to support the Kinsey Institute.
But school officials have not revealed details about how the proposal will change the operation of the institute, where professors and students conduct research about sex and gender.
In late October, the university proposed moving some of the institute’s administrative and operating functions to a newly created not-for-profit, while keeping its collections and archives under university ownership. But that plan—which the university has never fully detailed—met with significant faculty and staff pushback, including a petition with nearly 8,000 signatures and a campus protest.
The trustees tabled the proposal to gather feedback and further consider the logistics of the not-for-profit. But faculty and students say they know little more about that option than they did when it was first introduced. And it’s not clear whether the proposal the trustees will consider Friday still involves the not-for-profit structure.
On this Friday’s IU board agenda, the matter is described a “designation of the Kinsey Institute as a University-Related Entity in accordance with the University-Related Legal Entities Policy.” That’s the same wording that was used on the November agenda, when the proposal first came up.
A representative of the IU board did not respond to a request for comment about what the members will consider on Friday.
But IU spokesman Mark Bode said the board’s goal is to “determine how best to ensure the university’s continued support for the Kinsey Institute.”
And he said that “whatever approach is ultimately implemented, the university remains steadfastly committed to the uninterrupted scholarship and research of the Kinsey Institute and its world-class faculty.”
Bode also said the board received a report from a working group that IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav convened last year to gather input about the Kinsey issues. The working group included several Kinsey stakeholders as well as university financial officers, including three accountants, to offer insight and provide guidance about how to be compliant with the new law.
The group’s work has happened behind the scenes, but Inside INdiana Business obtained the 19-page report of its findings, which provides a history of the issue and makes recommendations for meeting the requirements of the state law.
The group did not endorse turning Kinsey Institute operations over to a not-for-profit organization. Instead, it urged IU to proceed with what it referred to as an “accounting solution,” which would require that IU maintain separate financial books for the institute that document the source of all its funding as well as all of its direct and indirect costs.
That methodology “is possible today using the university’s general ledger, as the Kinsey Institute has already been established as a separately defined accounting organization within the university’s chart of accounts,” the report said.
The law IU is trying to accommodate was introduced by state Rep. Lorissa Sweet, R-Wabash, who proposed the Kinsey amendment to the state budget in February 2023. Her argument against the institute was based on debunked allegations regarding the institute’s founder and namesake, Alfred Kinsey, and the nature of his research. The legislation was passed the Republican-controlled House and Senate, largely along party lines.
At the time, IU President Pamela Whitten released a statement saying the legislative action sets a “troubling precedent” for academic freedom.
Already, the Kinsey Institute does not directly receive state dollars. Rather, it is largely funded by grants, contracts and donors. What money IU does spend on the institute comes from tuition, school reserves and other sources. However, the institute benefits from shared campuses resources that are funded with state dollars. That complicates the act of separating the funding.
But the working group’s report noted that its accounting recommendations were preliminarily reviewed and OK’d by IU’s external auditors and that a financial solution would not incur significant additional costs.
The working group also recommended that IU postpone “further examination of a separate 501(c)(3), at least until after the first audit review and start of the new fiscal year.”
And it said that the institute’s constituents told the group they did not want to see changes in Kinsey’s mission and structure. And they want the institute to remain in Lindley Hall.
“While there may be strategic and political reasons outside the purview of this Working Group, we caution that any separation at this time, absent ownership of assets, is likely to be a charged and heavily criticized decision,” the report reads.
“If a separate 501(c)(3) were installed to establish an independent entity, we presume that university policies and procedures surrounding faculty governance and the protection of academic freedom would not necessarily apply, potentially creating risk and vulnerability given the Kinsey Institute’s renowned research on human sexuality including topics that some consider taboo,” the report said.
To mitigate risks, the report also recommended the university attempt to fight misinformation and defend academic freedom through a lawmaker education push as well as a communications and marketing plan. The report also seeks additional security measures for the institute as well as the development of a fundraising campaign to increase the institute’s financial independence.
Shrivastav said in a column released by IU on Feb. 15 that “everyone involved in this process seeks to protect and promote the work of the Kinsey Institute – in perpetuity at IU.”
Kinsey faculty and students
In general, Kinsey faculty, staff and students appear to support the working group’s recommendations that IU use an accounting solution (rather than a not-for-profit) to comply with the state law and say that IU must defend the institute from misinformation and defamatory attacks.
“One thing that is sort of a challenge is that this idea to separate the Kinsey into a separate nonprofit organization, it is not necessary,” said Zoe Peterson, Kinsey senior scientist and director of the Sexual Assault Research Initiative.
Peterson talks about how IU should seek an accounting solution and the background of the issue.
Instead, she said, IU will have to implement “accounting solutions to ensure that the Kinsey Institute isn’t receiving state funds.”
Others urged the university to do more to stand up for the institute and founder Alfred Kinsey. Both are being unfairly attacked by lawmakers, students and faculty say.
“It’s clear to me that there are other motives [for the university] and that there seems to be an anti-Kinsey bias,” student Melissa Blundell-Osorio said. “It’s the only reason why they would continue to pursue this proposal when there isn’t a need for it. “
Peterson said she and others feel the university did not mount a strong enough defense last year when the law was being debated, especially when the institute’s researchers wanted to speak with lawmakers and educate them about their research.
“The Kinsey Institute is one of the best-known brands at Indiana University,” she said. “We hope that Indiana University will provide us a stable home and hopefully, help defend us against some of the critics who don’t understand our work.”•
IIB reached out to Sweet, the lawmaker who authored the Kinsey amendment, repeatedly to ask how she believes IU could comply with the state law, but she did not respond.