Women's and Gender Studies: "the sacred cow.."

I shoot sporting clays and trap regularly, and one gentleman at the club is a "retired" geology professor at a local college. By "retired" I mean he was forced to retire because of this local public institution's financial problems. He complained how the STEM departments, math, physics, pretty much any hard sciences are being shrunk if not completely eradicated because of it. Women and gender studies however he exclaims "is a sacred cow no one wants to go after because of possible retaliation". It struck me that the least useful discipline, which rationally should be first on the chopping block is sacrisanct while actual useful degrees are being phased out. It really hit home today how much influence radical feminism has on academia and society at large.