WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 14, 1998, Thursday
Section A; Page 23, Column 2

TO THE EDITOR:
I'm writing to take issue with Roger Kimball's screed, "What Next, A Doctorate of Depravity?" (5/5/98). Conferences such as "Queer Publics/Queer Privates" are occasions at which scholars come together to discuss new ideas, to test out new knowledges, and to, indeed, transgress the complacencies of received academic wisdom. Kimball objects to the personal nature of many of the panelists' remarks. But feminists, too, have argued that "the personal is political," a slogan from which developed a rich body of rigorous feminist theory. Queer studies will also build a body of theory that both reveals and carefully investigates the relationships among the personal and the political, the sexual and the intellectual, adding to common knowledge in significant ways. Universities must continue to trumpet diversity of thought. Attempting to shut down debate and dissent through moralizing, willful misunderstandings like Kimball's does a disservice to the progress of ideas. And let's not forget: scholars who generate queer theory are taxpayers, too.

Jill Dolan
Executive Director
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
CUNY Graduate Center