Gay Faculty Outraged at Powell Invitation

As gay and lesbian members of the faculty, we are writing to express our outrage at the fact--as insulting as it is injurious to us--that Colin Powell has been invited to speak at commencement and receive an honorary Harvard degree.

The recent so-called debate on "gays in the military" has been bad enough. We have had to witness not just our claims to full citizenship, but our very right to exist, made subject to hearing and referendums. We have heard murderous fantasies, and seen real beatings, count as legitimate contributions to this debate. Now the most outspoken opponent of our rights in this regard--who can hardly bring himself even to condemn the violence that his own pronouncements have licensed in his ranks--will occupy the highest-profile podium that Harvard can afford him, and will there argue once more for the general unfitness of gay people to participate in the military. Meanwhile, we will be expected to sit alongside him in polite silence, deprived of any right to "free speech" of our own.

No doubt you didn't mean to diminish us, or to assault our morale and efficacy as teachers by glorifying homophobia thus. We frankly wonder how far we figured in your thoughts, if at all. We cannot stop you from inviting Powell to Harvard, but we must express our strong feeling that his opinions on this issue are without merit, insulting and discriminatory. Given its timing, the Harvard invitation is all too likely to give comfort to those who think it is acceptable to belittle, misrepresent and continue to disenfranchise us.

We are appalled that Harvard has so blatantly backed away from its position of moral leadership on the ROTC issue, and that it has been so easy to abstract--and so dismiss--the "gay issue" as having no connection (or none that need be considered) with the concerns, the rights, the bodies, the lives of some of the actual men and women who teach, work, and study at Harvard.

We insist on an immediate apology for Powell's invitation, in the form of a public reaffirmation of the University's commitment (now sadly in doubt) to the full and equal rights of--specifically--its gay and lesbian faculty, staff and students. As proof of Harvard's good faith in this, we further insist that you speak out at commencement to dissociate our university from General Powell's bigotry. D.A. Miller, Professor of English   Barbara Johnson,   Professor of English and   Comparative Literature   Jeffrey Masten, Instructor in English   Phillip Brian Harper,   Assistant Professor of   English and Afro-American Studies   Frederick Neuhouser,   Assistant Professor of Philosophy