The Kinsey Institute, the world’s top sex research center, faces existential threat from conservative attacks

Protesters unfurl a scroll with 5,500 petition signatures against a plan to separate the Kinsey Institute from Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana, on 8 November 2023. Photograph: Jeremy Hogan/The Bloomingtonian/Alamy

The future of the Kinsey Institute, the world’s premier sex research center, is in limbo.

Last April, lawmakers in Indiana’s Republican-dominated state legislature voted to block the Kinsey Institute from receiving any state funds through Indiana University (IU), which houses the institute. Its researchers have spent the months since scrambling to figure out what this means for their work – and Indiana University, they say, has largely left them out of the discussion.