To Members of the UArizona Community,

On September 6, someone took a photograph of slides used in a Clinical Skills Immersion class in the College of Nursing that described gender-affirming care for young people. Those images were then tweeted on X by an anti-trans hate group, retweeted by Elon Musk, and viewed more than two million times. The next day, various faculty and staff  in the College of Nursing received hate calls and threatening emails, some of which called for shutting the College of Nursing down, and by Thursday, the school was on lockdown.

Unfortunately, the initial official response to this intimidation campaign on behalf of the University of Arizona refused to support the curriculum of the faculty teaching the class, stating, “The College of Nursing does not recommend or advocate for young children to be asked gender-related questions in wellness checks.”

The University’s statement is harmful. It contradicts medically accurate and evidence-based practices regarding gender-affirming care for young people, which support screening for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents. These are supported by the American Medical Association, the American Nursing Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and numerous other professional medical associations. The University’s willingness to go against science based recommendations and compromise the integrity of our medical community and our faculty’s curriculum because of bullying tactics of outside voices is unacceptable. We believe our colleagues and students in the College of Nursing deserve better, and their patients most certainly deserve to receive medical care from those trained according to the highest medical standards. 

We stand in solidarity with our colleagues in the College of Nursing, and we have the utmost confidence in their expertise and their care of people in the transgender community. Without gender-affirming care, young people across the nation stand at great risk of depression, isolation, and suicide.  Indeed, in the states where such care has been criminalized, the deleterious effects on young trans people is already painfully evident. Our faculty and staff deserve the University’s full support in providing evidence-based education to students who will become the future healthcare providers. They also deserve our full support in the face of these hateful attacks. 

We call on President Robbins and the UArizona administration to issue a statement committing themselves to protecting the safety and well-being of the faculty, staff and students in the College of Nursing, and we call for a commitment to the highest standards of care for trans and all youth, as defined by the respected medical associations of our nation. The content of our classroom pedagogy will not be determined by people basing healthcare on hate speech and violence. Further, the safety of our transgender community of faculty, staff, and students is not up for debate. We stand in solidarity with all transgender people who are facing violent attacks across our nation. We call on you to do the same.

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