MARCH 1998
To the CHRONICLE:

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY is extremely concerned about the way in which SUNY Trustee Candace de Russy framed the ongoing controversy over last fall's "Revolting Behavior" Conference at SUNY-New Paltz in the March 6, 1998, issue of THE CHRONICLE.

When this debacle began, CLAGS wrote to endorse SUNY-New Paltz President Roger W. Bowen's support of the conference. In our view, it's crucial to the public discourse of the state that our university system be encouraged to foster dialogue about controversial topics with the presumption of full academic freedom. Despite the gains of the feminist and gay and lesbian movements over the last 20-odd years, women's sexuality remains under-addressed in public academic venues. Sexual freedom is a topic that merits rigorous public investigation.

But Trustee Candace de Russy feels that the "truth" (in her assessment) of New Paltz conference was that it "recruited" students to lesbian sadomasochism; "proselytized" for lesbian sex (among other sexual practices by which she is clearly horrified) ; "market[ed] sex toys"; distributed sex manuals; and sponsored "diatribes against males" and "lewd performances." Ms. de Russy's reading of this event seems obviously to stem from her own ideological leanings, and her clear antipathy for frank discussions of sexual possibilities. For these reasons, she finds that academic freedom should have been abrogated for this conference, because the faculty's right to free expression and inquiry was in her assessment reduced to "a prerogative of obscene self-indulgence" and "provocation." 

Apparently agreeing with Ms. de Russy, the SUNY Board of Trustees has ignored an internal administrative review of the conference that exonerated President Bowen and that upheld the intellectual and educational legitimacy of the conference. The review found that the conference did constitute a contribution to the educational mission of the State University.

By rejecting the internal report, the SUNY trustees do not just throw into question their commitment to academic freedom. They also undermine the important values that academic freedom sustains and is dependent upon--faculty self-governance and independence from politicized oversight.  Paul R. Perez, another SUNY trustee, wrote in the New York Times, "I disagree with the opinions of the authors of the report; moreover, I disagree with the governance model underlying it--namely, that all governing authority at SUNY resides with the faculty. In rejecting a resolution endorsing the report, the trustees rejected both the authors' opinions about the New Paltz situation as well as the governance model" (2-14-98, A12).

Ms. de Russy's and Mr. Perez's salvos represent a threat to an academic governance system in which the ability of faculty to judge the competence of their own members is essential to the educational mission of the university. Education is best served when faculty can pursue research without fear of reprisal. This is especially the case when it comes to the study and teaching of unpopular or underrepresented subjects: there can be no intellectual freedom when the shape of research is directed by the need to avoid being targeted by politicians. The SUNY Trustees have now, we understand, requested vitae from faculty in Women's Studies who were involved with the New Paltz conference. We find this a chilling exercise, one undoubtedly aimed to police certain kinds of research and thinking.

Ms. de Russy stresses the need for accountability in her justification of the SUNY Board of Trustees' actions, writing, "Absent such an exercise of oversight by higher-education leaders, the mad march on our campuses toward every-greater depths of anti-intellectual deviance, driven by fringe groups and by ideologues concerned not with science and learning but with indoctrination, will advance. The academy will suffer--and rightly so--in taxpayers' esteem."

But before rushing to defend the new centralization on the grounds that it improves the accountability of the state system to taxpayers, it is important to note that the women and sexual minorities whom Ms. de Russy vilifies are also tax-paying citizens. Investigating their experiences in academic fora is part of the very accountability Ms. de Russy so highly prizes. That said, education cannot be measured by the bottom line of tax dollars but by the higher reach of possibility that open intellectual inquiry fosters.

Finally, we worry that attacks on the SUNY New Paltz conference and on President Bowen support a more general and disturbing misrepresentation of academic labor as no work at all, a misperception then used to justify cutting access and funding to the State and City University systems. The invisibility of labor seems especially pressing in marginalized areas such as feminism and gay and lesbian studies, since the topics at hand are already, historically, not given wide and detailed attention. Disparaging or misunderstanding our labor undermines the conditions of teaching and research for state employees in academe, and harms the students we teach by limiting the scope of their potential knowledge. 

Studies in sexuality are important and necessary work for many academics researching across disciplines. Feminist and gay and lesbian studies of sexuality have long been subject to rigorous intellectual standards, and are typically marked by the passion of experience that founds the best of contemporary research. We regret that the vilification of the New Paltz conference is in some ways so predictable; it mirrors a history of homophobia and the hatred of women's sexuality that so many academic thinkers have worked for so many long, devoted years to confront, disspel, and at long last end. It pains us that in 1998, we still have such a long way to go.

Sincerely,

Prof. Jill Dolan
Executive Director
for the Board of Directors
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
Graduate School and University Center
The City University of New York