Harvard endows chair on gay studies
Professorship would be first in US, backers say
It took decades and, at times, antagonistic battles, but Harvard's gay community says it has finally cemented its academic legitimacy at the nation's oldest university. College officials will announce today that they will establish an endowed chair in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, in what is believed to be the first professorship of its kind in the country.
Harvard president Drew G. Faust described the academic post as "an important milestone" in an ongoing effort by faculty, students, and alumni to raise the profile of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies at the university.
The university has received a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus to endow the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Matthiessen stands out as an unusual example of a gay man whose sexuality was an "open secret" in the mid-20th century, Harvard officials said.
A literary critic and chairman of the college's undergraduate program in history and literature, he leaped to his death from a Boston hotel room in 1950 at age 48 following the death of his longtime partner.
"Harvard has a very powerful voice, and this is a very powerful statement about equality and inclusiveness," said Mitchell Adams, former Massachusetts revenue commissioner under Governor William Weld and a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers who cochaired the three-year fund-raising campaign for the professorship. "When Harvard does something like this, it causes a ripple effect around the world."
When Adams arrived at Harvard as an undergraduate in 1962, he began what would be seven years of psychotherapy twice a week to try to be straight, he said. "We didn't have the vocabulary for gay," he said. "You didn't talk about this stuff."
More colleges, including Yale, Brown, Cornell, and New York University, offer academic programs related to sex, sexuality and sexual orientation, though lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies are a relatively new discipline. The City University of New York began the first gay- and lesbian-studies program in 1986, according to Harvard. While Harvard has offered a sprinkling of courses related to gay and lesbian studies in the past, it did not allow students to major in the field until the 2004-2005 academic year.
"Harvard defines itself by what it teaches, and Harvard doesn't like to jump into something unless it really feels it's legitimate," said Tom Parry, former president of the caucus. "People saw this as the final step in Harvard embracing its gay and lesbian faculty."
Adams is expected to announce the gift tonight during the caucus's annual commencement dinner.
The caucus - a 4,900-member group composed of alumni, faculty, staff, and students - was founded in 1984 to advocate for Harvard's gay community.
Harvard was slow to embrace gay civil rights, some alumni said. At the time, Harvard did not include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy, nor did it offer benefits to domestic partners.
"Until the mid-'90s, it was a pretty antagonistic relationship with Harvard," Parry said. "Harvard was politically liberal but socially conservative."
Much has changed. The university began hiring gay and lesbian advisers in its undergraduate houses. Its most prominent clergyman - the Rev. Peter Gomes, minister of Memorial Church - came out in 1991, and despite a campaign by religious fundamentalist students to oust him, Harvard embraced Gomes.
In 1998, Harvard appointed religion professor Diana Eck and her partner, Dorothy Austin, as the first gay housemasters. And last year, Harvard appointed its first openly gay dean, Evelynn Hammonds.
"What more is there to advocate for? Harvard embraces the gay community completely," said Parry. And so the caucus turned its attention toward fund-raising to support academic programs, as any other alumni group would do, Parry said.
Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, said the endowed professorship is a testament to "how far we have come as a community." It will "advance our knowledge in this discipline and transmit LGBT history to our undergraduates for years to come."
The new professorship will allow Harvard to invite scholars studying sexuality or sexual minorities to teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for one semester.
The visiting professorship will advance lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies at Harvard by exposing students and faculty to cutting-edge ideas as leading thinkers rotate through the position, Harvard officials said, as well as help expand the field internationally.
Some critics of the interdisciplinary field say it is yet another example of a specialization, like women's studies and African-American studies, that focuses on identity politics and attracts a niche group of students.
"These fields combine intellectual inquiry with advocacy, and advocacy, in my view, has been a blight on higher education for the last 30 to 40 years, whereby the principles upon which universities were founded, the search for truth, got sidetracked," said Peter Wood president of the New Jersey-based National Association of Scholars.
Brad Epps - chairman of Harvard's women, gender, and sexuality program - insisted that the creation of the professorship was "not a politically motivated endeavor."
"Virtually every university of any intellectual merit has something related to LGBT studies," Epps said. "Before this initiative, Harvard was somewhat behind the curve."
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. 