Drag queen professor to teach queer ethnography at Harvard

LaWhore Vagistan was invited to the Ivy League school amid a funding clash with the White House

Harvard University’s plan to host a visiting drag queen professor for courses on queer ethnography and the cultural impact of a long-running drag reality show remains on track despite the Trump administration’s policy of opposing ‘woke ideology’.

The Ivy League institution is currently in a legal battle with the administration of US President Donald Trump over billions in federal funding that it is seeking to cut on various grounds.

Harvard’s invitation to Kareem Khubchandani – an associate professor at Tufts University who also performs in drag as LaWhore Vagistan – was made in July and was highlighted this week by the New York Post and other outlets. Khubchandani, whose scholarship and activism focus on queer life, will teach queer ethnography this fall and a course on RuPaul’s Drag Race in the spring 2026 semester.

According to the New York Post, Khubchandani has made his drag persona “an integral part of their pedagogy.” In interviews, the professor has explained that ‘LaWhore’ is a risque play on the name of the Pakistani city of Lahore, while ‘Vagistan’ refers to the Indian subcontinent imagined as female genitalia.

Professor Kareem Khubchandani’s Critical Drag course walks students through the process of creating a drag persona. https://t.co/NzVPsVCYhn @kareempuff @TuftsDrama pic.twitter.com/iJOHd2OuWd

— Tufts University (@TuftsUniversity) April 24, 2018

In a 2022 article titled ‘The Sexual Experiment at the Ivy Leagues’, National Interest magazine cited Khubchandani as an example of academics turning US universities into “incubators of gender fundamentalists,” arguing that students are being equipped with “ever-expanding terminology for sexual orientation” and encouraged to pursue activism “without cultivating a sense of intellectual humility.”