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Harvard University
Harvard University is creating an endowed professorship in
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual studies, the first of its
kind in the United States and reflecting a rise in sex-related
academia nationwide.
The Ivy League school will invite visiting scholars to teach on
sexuality and issues related to sexual minorities for one semester
each, a Harvard official said.
While other universities have course offerings and degree programs
in sexuality studies, Harvard's healthy endowment allows the
professorship on the subject to be funded in perpetuity, the first
university in the country to do so.
The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus raised $2.3 million to fund
the role, to be known as the "FO Matthiessen Visiting Professorship
of Gender and Sexuality", named after American studies scholar and
literary critic, FO Matthiessen.
Matthiessen, who died in 1950, chaired an undergraduate program in
history and literature at Harvard, where he kept his homosexuality
largely secret.
Harvard gave undergraduates the option in 2003 of concentrating on
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues as an academic field,
according to the university.
Academic programs related to sex, sexuality and sexual orientation
are sprouting on American campuses - from Yale University to the
University of California Berkeley and the University of
Minnesota.
"It's not so much that we've been able to raise this money, it's
that Harvard and the faculty at Harvard have accepted this
perpetual endowment for gay and lesbian studies," said Mitchell
Adams of the Harvard Board of Overseers, one of two governing
boards at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school.
The position indicates growing acceptance of the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender community, Adams added.
Candace Gingrich, a youth outreach manager at gay-rights advocates
the Human Rights Campaign, said the new role gives students in the
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community something
to aspire to.
"Any time a university as renowned as Harvard feels it is important
and sees it is important to have an endowed professorship in LGBT
studies is recognition that it is an important issue," said
Gingrich, sister of former Republican Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Newt Gingrich.
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