What are the barriers to gender and sexual equality in higher education?

What happens when “science,” “common sense,” and “neutrality” become political weapons?

In this episode of Dialogues for Resistance, we explore how anti-gender politics targets knowledge itself: universities, classrooms, research, equality work, and the people who make these spaces more inclusive. We ask why gender and sexuality scholarship is so often framed as “ideology,” while anti-gender actors present their own moral and political claims as objective truth.

From Poland to Germany and Hungary, we look at how these struggles reshape academic freedom, institutional safety, and everyday life — through complaints, censorship, intimidation, policy pressure, and attacks on equality work.

But this is not only a story of backlash. It is also a story of resistance: of educators, researchers, students, and activists using policies, alliances, and solidarity to keep knowledge open, critical, and alive.

Listen in to understand why the battle over knowledge is never just academic — and why defending it matters to us all.

Keywords: epistemics, HEI, DEI, inclusive education, Gender Equality Plans, academia, gender equality, LGBTIQ+ rights

Episode Citation: Kulpa, R., & Zabrzewska, A. (2026). Knowledges: Anti-Gender Politics and Education (S01E01). Podcasting Social Justice: Dialogues for Resistances (Podcast Series). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22044884

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CITING THE PODCAST SERIES:

Kulpa, R., & Zabrzewska, A. (2026). Podcasting Social Justice: Dialogues for Resistances (Podcast Series). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21676257