Fifteen years ago, The Daily Princetonian ran a feature on Michael Cadden. A course he was leading used gay literary texts, and at Princeton, it was news.
Cadden, then an assistant English professor and now director of the University's theater and dance program, was teaching a course called "Sexuality and Textuality: Speaking the Unspeakable."
The title referred to the theological designation of homosexuality as "a sin not to be named among Christians."
Cadden said in the article then that he only received questions from undergraduates about why he was teaching the course.
Most faculty and graduate students understood why he was offering the class. Only occasionally did they ask why he devoted an entire semester to the topic. But he still felt exposed when it ran in the 'Prince.' Never had he taught a course that made the front page of the newspaper.
Only two years before he taught the seminar, the University added sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy. And, it was not until two years later that the student Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Princeton held its first Gay Pride week.
In his supplementary description for the course catalog, Cadden included the word "gay" to describe the literary texts on the syllabus. Soon thereafter, he received a note from the Course of Study Committee. Was the word "gay" slang for homosexual?
At first, Cadden was taken aback, but he recognized an opportunity. He replied with a note about the history of words describing same-sex affections.
Several professors thanked Cadden for teaching the class and called it the "brave" thing to do, he said.
Though the LGBT undergraduate group has expanded since the mid-1980s, no formal organization among faculty exists.
However, speaking the unspeakable among University faculty has not changed much since 1987 even though the public climate has.
Several gay professors are happy that being homosexual and teaching gay texts is not news.
Faculty change
Though the reception at the University may have been understanding, as Cadden says it was, the climate on "elite university" campuses has changed considerably since he taught the class.
During Cadden's undergraduate years at Yale University it was not so much that there was a "clandestine" atmosphere on campus. He "didn't even know what [he] thought" and had an "inability to articulate the subject intellectually," he said.
Whereas Cadden's class presented gay literary texts, his own undergraduate intellectual experience at Yale avoided the entire topic of gender to conform to the norms of academia.
His undergraduate classes "used to be all male voices with the occasional nod to Jane Austen," he said. "There were always gay writers on the syllabus, you just were not allowed to mention it."
Stephen Macedo GS '87, who directs the University's Center for Human Values, also said the current acceptance would have been unimaginable during his undergraduate years at the College of William and Mary.
"I didn't know anybody as a professor or as a student who was openly gay," said Macedo, who was not out as an undergraduate. "There were professors who I had a pretty good suspicion who were gay," but would not be open about it.
By the time Macedo was a graduate student at the University, the campus atmosphere had tempered but was not yet supportive.
"The campus was not hostile but not welcoming either," said Shawn Cowls '87, former head of the gay alliance and now head of the Fund for Reunion — an independent organization dedicated to helping gay and lesbian members of the University community.
As a math major, Cowls did not take classes where gay material would be included, but he said such material in the humanities was considered "somewhat illicit and prurient."
"The faculty tended to gloss over it," he said.
When Cowls was an undergraduate there were few faculty who were out.
"[It] has definitely changed in the sense that there are out faculty," he said. "I don't get the sense that anybody wanted to be [out] there when I was there."
Macedo said the age and generational differences account for the change in acceptance. And the AIDS epidemic substantially altered perception.
"[It] forced some prominent people out of the closet and had an enormous effect on public culture," he said.
Community and classroom
Debbie Bazarsky, who has been the LGBT student services coordinator since July, said she has noticed a "silence" among LGBT faculty at the University. She said because the campus is "very closeted," it is harder for faculty at the University than for faculty at other schools."We don't have a strong 'out-teaching' community," she said. "Gay and lesbian faculty associate, but I wouldn't define it as a community."
Cowls, who reaches out to faculty to help them feel comfortable on the campus, said "gay faculty are fragmented much like faculty in general."
Bazarsky attributed the silence to a lack of comfort and, for "high-profile" professors, a "legitimate fear" that being openly gay would hurt their professional careers.
"Some [faculty] feel it is hostile, others don't," Cowls said. "There are little pockets of faculty and so much depends on what pocket you wind up in."
Cadden said he could not think of any professors who are fearful, but are rather the opposite — comfortable.
"The silence is because they don't feel the need to speak," he said. Projects and courses receive funding, he said, and faculty members are not disadvantaged.
Since coming to the University, Macedo has taught subjects involving sexual orientation and the morality of homosexuality.
"My impression over the last seven to eight years at elite universities like Princeton is even if people disagree with colleagues this is a very respectful place," he said. "It is good to get the arguments on the table."
However, when Macedo was an assistant professor at Harvard more than a decade ago, he did not feel entirely open.
Macedo said he wrote publicly about the 1986 Supreme Court ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld Georgia's sodomy law and maintained that privacy rights of people to have consensual sex in private do not exist for homosexuals.
"I wasn't really in the closet about it but, I was less likely to bring my partner to events," he said.
Role models
Bazarsky said not having many faculty who are out, "makes it challenging for students who don't have role models who are confident with who they are."
English professor Jeff Nunokawa said he does not intentionally make sexuality central to his classes.
"I like to think that students feel free to express their opinions, to mount their arguments quite irrespective of what they perceive of my sexuality," he said.
Classics professor Daniel Mendelsohn GS '94 also said being gay does not affect what he teaches, but possibly how he teaches. In assigning a sonnet on unrequited love, he said students were more free to express themselves.
"Because they know I'm gay, if there are gay students in the class they may feel they can write a more honest sonnet," he said.
For both Cadden and Macedo, whether there is a strong sense of community among LGBT professors is not the issue.
"At this point I'm not sure how much people have in common as adults just because they are gay or lesbian," Macedo said. "The far more important thing is that people feel connected to their departments and programs, and that they don't feel alienated on account of sexual orientation."
Academic life, Cadden said, and the pursuit of knowledge is often an individual endeavor.
"I certainly know gay and lesbian faculty members, but I don't necessarily hang out with other members of the faculty," he said.
Macedo said there would be more of a faculty community if the Pride Alliance organized more events engaging sexual orientation academically.
"Just being sociable for the sake of being sociable is not going to work," he said. "It doesn't surprise me that there would be more of a community among gay and lesbian undergrads," than faculty.
For Cadden and Macedo, the climate has become more welcoming for everybody including faculty. It is no longer breaking news that an English seminar will use gay literary texts.
Rather, the lessons of gay and lesbian studies have been so internalized, Nunokawa said, that they are paradoxically invisible.
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