A self-proclaimed multi-talented University of Arizona faculty member, Assistant Professor Harris Kornstein, who boasts of being a drag queen “by night,” aims to reach students of all ages through his brand of queer pedagogy. While he certainly has his fans and supporters based on reviews from some of his students on Ratemyprofessor.com, not all of his students are comfortable with his methods.
Kornstein, who performs as “Lil Miss Hot Mess”, is a board member for Drag Queen Story Hour, and author of two books targeting the children’s market; The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and If You’re a Drag Queen and You Know It.
Kornstein, according to his biography on the University of Arizona’s Department of Public & Applied Humanities website, is “a scholar and artist whose research and art practice focuses on digital culture, surveillance, data and algorithms, media art/activism, visual culture, and queer theory. Their current book project documents queer and trans cultural strategies that mobilize techniques of play, misuse, and obfuscation to counter surveillance capitalism…”
It is his advocacy for performances in drag for minors, and his adherence to “drag pedagogy” which he claims “provides a performative approach to queer pedagogy,” that prompted two of his students, who wish to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, to reach out to trusted mentors with their concerns.
“Students connected with Republicans United of Arizona have shared a disturbing report from the University of Arizona regarding campus faculty and exploitation. It should no longer surprise anyone hiring standards have declined across public institutions to the point where satanic drag queens are accommodated and considered fit for employment. We would like to know who interviewed Mr. Kornstein when UofA hired him, although we suspect the University will protect and deflect for far-left activists who are hell bent to increase their influence within academia,” Richard Thomas, National Chairman Republicans United LLC, told the Arizona Daily Independent. “ We call on the Arizona Board of Regents to conduct an audit on all hiring procedures to ensure people like Kornstein are issued trespassing citations from schools, not jobs.”
Kornstein frequently complains about “hate” from conservatives, but appeared to enjoy participating in a ceremony in which the Christian faith is mocked by the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” In that ceremony, he is “sainted’ before performing a “miracle” by mockingly multiplying loaves and fishes.
Kornstein argues that “Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) provides a generative extension of queer pedagogy into the world of early childhood education.” Kornstein, along with his co-author Harper B. Keenan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia, writes that “Many elements of DQSH are common to early childhood schooling: bright colours, music, art, and imaginative play. There is an adult teacher leading a classroom of young students. What is different, though, is that the teacher is a drag queen. She breaks the limiting stereotype of a teacher: she is loud, extravagant, and playful. She encourages children to think for themselves and even to break the rules. She is the exponential product of Ms. Frizzle and Bob the Drag Queen. She is a queer teacher. To the unimaginative adult (which – sigh – describes most of us), it might seem that the world of drag and the world of children are impossibly distant from one another.”
However, keeping drag queen propaganda and children distant from one another was a big part of why Arizona parents and voters elected conservative Tom Horne to serve as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction this last November.
One of the most popular issues Horne ran on and got elected on was eliminating a link on the Arizona Department of Education’s website for children in search of LGBTQ+ resources, which also helped them to conceal these items from their parents.
Under former Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman’s leadership, the “Q Chat Space” link directed young students, who wondered if they might be LGBTQ+, to chat rooms, usually hosted by members of the LGBTQ+ community. The online chat room provided a “quick escape” feature in case a kid wanted to hide it from their parents.
Horne argued that the “Q Chat Space” was illegal. Horne noted that an Arizona statute prohibits government agencies from encouraging children to hide information from their parents and that the “escape button” was deliberately designed to do just that.
As a result, even though civil libertarians might argue that Kornstein’s academic freedom should be afforded protections, advocates for children and for parental rights say that Arizona’s kids should be protected from the “queer indoctrination” being pushed by Kornstein.