HARVARD — The world’s most famous university is adding a little glitter to its ivy.

First reported by the Harvard conservative aggregator Yard Report, Harvard’s Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program has welcomed Kareem Khubchandani, a Tufts University professor, drag performer, and author, as the 2025–2026 F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Associate Professor. His appointment means undergrads will soon be able to put RuPaul’s Drag Race on their résumés.

This fall, Khubchandani is teaching Queer Ethnography, a deep dive into how scholars study LGBTQ communities — and, yes, there are still seats available. But it’s his spring course that’s already causing buzz in Cambridge: RuPaulitics: Drag, Race, and Desire. The title says it all — a Harvard class built around the politics of drag and the pop-culture juggernaut that turned RuPaul into a global icon.

Khubchandani, who also performs in drag as LaWhore Vagistan, has spent his career at the intersection of nightlife, performance, and politics. His books include Decolonize Drag and Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife, which racked up multiple national awards and established him as a leading voice in queer performance studies.

Next up? Lessons in Drag: A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties — due out this October from Brandeis University Press. To mark its release, Khubchandani will deliver the prestigious F.O. Matthiessen Lecture later this fall, bringing his scholarship — and signature sparkle — to the Harvard stage.

In addition to his solo work, he co-edited Queer Nightlife, curates the website criticalauntystudies.com, and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. He previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin before joining Tufts, where he is an Associate Professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

Not everyone is cheering. Critics of campus “wokeness” say Harvard’s embrace of drag courses is another sign of elite universities chasing cultural fads instead of focusing on academics. To them, RuPaulitics is less about scholarship and more about virtue-signaling — proof, they argue, that the Ivy League is spending its energy polishing its progressive credentials while students graduate underprepared for the real world.

For Harvard students, the message is clear: drag has officially entered the Ivy League syllabus. From Harvard Yard to Somerville nightclubs, Kareem Khubchandani is making sure the politics of performance aren’t confined to the stage.