King’s College London (KCL) has inconspicuously shelved its Engineering Design Empowerment Module, first assigned to students on October 16th, 2024. In an attempt to ‘queer’ its engineering degree, second-year undergraduates were asked to create something for LGBTQ+ people, by innovating towards a practical educational or safe space outcome. (Earlier group projects involved designing and building a Mars rover.)
More than 70 students filed a complaint form in response to the LGBTQ+ focus of this group project (worth 70% of the final grade). A separate petition signed by 74 students was even more critical; comments from both groups criticised indoctrination and cited a conflict between the course aims and their religious values. Some overseas students feared that taking part in the project could get them in trouble ‘back home.’
Perhaps worried about the loss of lucrative overseas student recruitment, KCL diluted the LGBTQ+ elements of the module (or ‘broadened its scope’ in the jargon) in November, and now the whole fiasco is being rested—although for non-King’s students it takes a visit to the ‘gender-critical’ corner of Mumsnet to know anything more about this.
Not for the first time, ‘social justice’ campaigners found that one of their target client groups was not on board with their grand schemes. The unspoken part of the story is that Muslim students appear to be driving the hostility to homosexuality: in any other academic setting, this would bring the ‘equity’ campaigners out in protest. So much for intersectionality: has no-one learnt the lessons of ‘Queers for Palestine’?
