Former teammate of transgender swimmer to speak at UI, days after lawsuit

• Paula Scanlan, former teammate of NCAA champion and openly transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, will visit the University of Iowa on Monday for a lecture headlined, "Men do not belong in women's sports."
• Scanlan starred in conservative commentator Matt Walsh's documentary, "What is a Woman?" -- a documentary Walsh discussed when he visited the UI campus a year ago.
• The visit comes days after a dozen-plus former and current college athletes sued the NCAA for violating their rights by letting Thomas compete in the 2022 national championships.
• The visit also comes on the heels of free speech-related directives from the Board of Regents, including creation of a free-speech committee, campus survey, and education initiative.

IOWA CITY — Just days after a dozen-plus college athletes sued the NCAA for violating their Title IX rights by letting transgender swimmer Lia Thomas compete in the 2022 national championships, conservative student group Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Iowa announced one of Thomas’ former teammates will visit campus next week for a talk titled, “Men do not belong in women’s sports.”

Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan’s lecture and Q&A on the UI campus “will highlight the importance of protecting women’s spaces — including sports, bathrooms and prisons,” according to a news release from the UI student organization.

“Scanlan will share how radical gender ideology is destroying women’s sports, in addition to championing freedom and the challenges she has overcome to share this message.”

The 7 p.m. Monday lecture is planned at the Blackbox Theater of the Iowa Memorial Union on the UI campus, where the same student group a year ago hosted conservative commentator Matt Walsh as part of his nationwide “What is a Woman” documentary tour — an event that sparked protests from transgender-rights advocates.

Scanlan starred in Walsh’s documentary before testifying in July before the House Judiciary Committee about “the dangers and due process violations of ‘gender-affirming care’ for children.”

In her testimony, Scanlan said, “My teammates and I were forced to undress in the presence of Lia” 18 times a week.

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“Some girls opted to change in bathroom stalls, and others used the family bathroom to avoid this,” she said during her testimony. “When we tried to voice our concern to the athletic department, we were told that Lia swimming and being in our locker room was non-negotiable, and we were offered psychological services to attempt to re-educate us to become comfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a male.”

Lawsuit

Thomas in 2022 became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I championship in any sport, according to the Associated Press, topping three Olympic medalists in taking the title.

She started her University of Pennsylvania swimming career on the men’s team but began transitioning in May 2019 and by 2021 had met NCAA hormone therapy requirements to swim on the women’s team.

Around the time of her championship, the NCAA, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee issued new transgender participation policies calling for sport-by-sport determinations. Thomas had teammates voice both support and opposition for her participation.

The lawsuit against the NCAA filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta — where Thomas won her title in the 2022 championships at host Georgia Tech University — seeks to stop the association from using transgender-eligibility policies that “adversely impact female athletes in violation of Title IX.”

An NCAA statement responding to the suit said, “The association and its members will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships,” according to the Associated Press.

Iowa free speech

The UI lecture comes just months after Iowa’s Board of Regents issued a list of 10 directives for its public universities related to diversity, equity and inclusion activities on campus — and as lawmakers more recently proposed baking those directives into law.

Among those directives were ones charging the campuses to explore recruitment strategies to advance intellectual and philosophical diversity and to establish an initiative creating opportunities for free speech education and research.

In 2021, following sharp criticism from lawmakers of perceived free-speech suppression across the universities, the Board of Regents issued 10 free-speech recommendations — including one barring “discrimination or denial of educational benefits because of the viewpoint of a student organization or a student.”

Scanlan in her testimony last summer reported suppression of her opposition at the University of Pennsylvania — including a retraction of an op-ed she wrote for the student newspaper.

“This is representative of a greater issue, the destruction of free speech,” she said in her testimony. “Today, any discussion of maintaining the sanctity of women’s spaces is labeled transphobic, bigoted and hateful.”

In promoting her visit to campus next week, the UI Young Americans for Freedom said they hoped to facilitate “a real discussion about how the Left is silencing women while continuing to promote men who identify as women into their spaces.”

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Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com