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GLBT Faculty Reject Marginalization
William Tierney
To the Editor:
Some nights ago my partner and I had dinner with the president of the University of Southern California and his wife. My dean and her husband have been dinner guests at our house. I have been president of the Academic Senate and currently work with the provost on our strategic plan. I mention these points in reference to Doug Steward's article, "Working Toward Equality," in the July-August issue. I do not question for a minute much of what he claims about the inequities gays and lesbians face in academe. I also know that vast differences exist for a tenured professor at a private university in Los Angeles and, for example, an untenured faculty member at a public college in the Bible belt. However, I am troubled when gay and lesbian academic portraits are drawn that place us as victims and on the margins. Steward states at the end of his article that "the campus community has not been an empowering place for GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered] people." Unfortunately, I agree. But that should be the beginning of our analysis, not its conclusion. Academic life is always fraught with uncertainty and the potential for discrimination when we question norms either through one's ideas or one's self. Such an observation ought not place us as victims awaiting yet another blow from an unfair system, but as engaged intellectuals at the center trying to change that system.
William Tierney
(Higher Education)
University of Southern California
Doug Steward Responds:
William Tierney rightly urges us not to accept complacently the systemic marginalization of GLBT members of academe. The phrase that he attributes to me, however, is not mine but a quotation from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's recent study Campus Climate for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered People: A National Perspective. I am pleased to note that the Supreme Court's June 26 decision in Lawrence v. Texas prevents future uses of state sodomy laws to discriminate against GLBT educators. Academic research in GLBT studies played a significant role in the court's reasoning.
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