(LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into the University of Minnesota Medical School’s funding of a project to produce “therapeutic” dolls designed to acclimate children as young as age four to gender fluidity.

As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, MyGender Dolls are described as a “first-of-their-kind therapeutic play approach designed for gender diverse children ages 4-10.” Details are sparse (interested visitors can join a waitlist for more information), but the purpose appears to be mixing dolls with differently gendered accessories (such as clothes and hair) to reflect the preferences of a gender-confused child (or an activist adult encouraging their “gender identity”). Additional reports indicate the dolls will also feature “removable internal and external genitals.”

The project, a brainchild of professors with the University of Minnesota’s Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual & Gender Health, received an unspecified amount of funding (potentially as much as $3,000) from the university’s MINCORPS program in 2024 plus an unspecified amount (potentially up to $10,000) from the university’s Early Innovation Fund.

“Details about how and where the dolls will be used are unclear, and the project creators have not returned requests for comment from The Fix and other news outlets,” The College Fix added.

On Wednesday, the Department of Education announced it is acting on a complaint its Student Privacy Policy Office (SPPO) received from the group Defending Ed and plans to investigate to ensure compliance with the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which requires parents be given an opportunity to opt their children out of any activity involving such dolls.

“While Governor (Tim) Walz and the radical left continue to funnel taxpayer dollars to perverted ideologies that can harm children, the Trump Administration is fighting to protect children’s innocence and defend parents’ role as the first and primary decision-makers in their child’s education,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. “No four-year-old should be exposed to such material – especially without a parent’s knowledge or consent. ED will enforce the law to its fullest extent, putting parents and families firmly in the driver’s seat of their child’s education.”

American institutions of higher education have long been recognized as heavily dominated by left-wing bias and historical revisionism, conditioning students to reject religion, traditional morality, and free markets, and to view America as a uniquely malignant force in the world, a society systemically rigged against the poor and minority groups, with identity-based grievances forming the foundation of so-called “social justice” and “intersectional” approaches to education.

LGBT groups arguably enjoy the highest standing in the current social justice hierarchy. The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American schools and libraries from book shelves to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas. Across the nation, controversy has also erupted in recent years over schools and libraries adopting books that attempt to expose sexual themes and activity to children, often in graphic detail and with pornographic imagery depicting specific sex acts.

The toll of such an activist bent often extends well beyond politics. In 2024, insiders from the University of California-Los Angeles’ (UCLA’s) prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine warned that the school’s diversity fixation had led to a crisis in which more than half of students in various cohorts admitted since 2020 fail standardized tests for basic medical knowledge of subjects ranging from emergency medicine and family medicine to internal medicine and pediatrics.

In response, the Trump administration has issued executive orders to deny federal funds to educational entities that indoctrinate students through DEI programs, among other executive actions to combat so-called “woke ideology” in education.

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