Stories Transform Goldfarb Into Activist

When Professor of Philosophy Warren D. Goldfarb '69 was the head tutor of his department in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he used to leave matchboxes from a local bar catering to a mostly gay clientele on a table in his office.

The matchboxes sat on the table for years, rarely used by smokers, but that was not their purpose. They were meant as a signal in a university where homosexuality was not universally acceptable--that Goldfarb's office was a haven for gay, bisexual and lesbian students.

It worked, Students like the gay undergraduate who, the victim of abuse from a homophobic roommate, was forced by College officials to move out of his suite, came to him with their stories. Or graduate students who, when interviewed for Harvard fellowships, were asked about their sexual orientation, felt comfortable approaching him.

Such stories pushed Goldfarb, an abstract mathematical logical theorist who has never held a permanent job outside Harvard University, to come out of the closet in the early 1980s, making him the first openly gay member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The stories made an activist out of a man who had stayed out of the conflicts that tore the College apart when he was a student. As a professor, he spearheaded a crusade for a University-wide rule forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Goldfarb is a slight, bearded man, often casually dressed in jeans and black Reeboks. Hardcovered philosophy books line the shelves of his large office, and a depiction of a cow amidst grass with the legend "Outstanding in the Field" adorns a mug sitting in the middle of his somewhat cluttered desk.

A student gave the mug to him, he explains. The two small figurines on another corner of the desk are part of a Wittgenstein joke reference comprehensible only to those in the know, but the humor of a nearby Citizen Goldfarb book, the self-published autobiography of an obscure industrialist, is self-explanatory.

It is unquestionably the office of a professor, with its academic in-jokes, student tributes, cluttered files and all, and its occupant is both the expected scholar and something else: the matchbox-collecting activist.

The activism, and the scholarship, provide a curious if not surprising mix given Goldfarb's background. He comes from a middle-class New York Jewish family. His parents were children of immigrants who valued education above all else and were willing to make financial sacrifices to send a son to Harvard.

His father, an accountant, and his mother, an elementary school teacher, prided themselves on his success at the College and were part of a world that prized a Harvard professor above any other avocation.

At his 20th reunion for the Bronx High School of Science, he recalls, "I was considered to be the greatest success story there."

But the same parents who valued his scholarly success were not always comfortable with other aspects of their son. Goldfarb says his late father never wanted to meet the partner the professor has now lived with for more than 15 years.

The college his parents prized so highly, despite fears that their son would encounter anti-Semitism, was a happy place for Goldfarb. He was involved in the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, the Lowell House Opera and Hillel, and he says he met no serious anti-Semitism.

It was an introductory class on logic and a General Education introduction to philosophy his first year that sparked the intellectual passion that has shaped his academic life ever since. Goldfarb was a mathematics major, but the philosophical questions were impossible for him to ignore.

"I was finding that these problems of philosophy did grip me," he says. The classes were challenging, but that only motivated him to move farther in the field and come to a real understanding.

"I liked the fact it was so hard," he says. "I would sit in a course given by John Rawls...I knew something great was going on and I just didn't get it."

He got it in time to write a summacum laude thesis, and he decided the questions raised by philosophy classes would become his life's work.

"I'm gripped by them," he says of the questions of logical theory he works to solve. He is "trying to think in most abstract ways about human cognition and human reason."

Asked to explain his research to a layperson, the professor leans forward and describes his works to explain the basis of mathematical thought, the axioms from which people's understanding of mathematical theorems stem.

"I worry about questions like what is the nature of inference, and what kind of sense can we make of the foundation of mathematics," he says. At its most basic, he is explaining the foundation for logical thought.

But as he admits, it is not a field of which the great mass of humanity is aware or understands. "These are hard problems but absolutely pervasive ones," he says. "It's an inquiry as to whether there's anything under the surface."

One can either "go on with ordinary uncritical practices of gathering knowledge," or one can seek to explore how that knowledge fits into a logical framework and what precisely constitutes "knowledge," he says. It is this exploration to which Goldfarb is dedicated, whether or not society ever understands the answers he provides.

It has brought him a meteoric rise in the academic world; from the College, he went to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he won a coveted place among the Junior Fellows. He joined the Faculty after graduation and lose quickly through the ranks, gaining tenure in 1982.

But the intellectual quest and the successful academic career it brought was only half of the story of Goldfarb's time at Harvard. When he was a happy undergraduate, despite the agitation for equal rights and accep tance at Harvard in the late 1960s, he was in a place where gays were "perverts" and coming out was impossible.

In graduate school, while he continuing his interest in music with voice lessons, he also underwent psychotherapy, seeking a "cure" for his sexual orientation.

"The culture viewed you as being in a diseased state, as unnatural," he says.

Around the time he got his doctorate sexual orientation. It was the difficulty of that process that led him, as a junior professor, to hold out a hand to younger people experiencing the same struggles.

"I had a hard time coming to tennis with my own orientation," he says. "I felt any help we could give to younger people was necessary."

But Goldfarb did not "come out" or begin any public pro-gay activity until after his tenure in 1982.

"I wasn't actively trying to hide it," he says, but "I had some concerns it might impact the tenure process."

Besides as a tenure vote approaches, a junior faculty member has no time for activism. "You don't even have hobbies at that point," Goldfarb says. Also, he recalls, he was convinced he "could do a lot more as a senior professor" than as an non-tenured member of the Faculty.

It was in 1982, then, after the title "Professor of Philosophy" was securely before his name, that Goldfarb started organizational efforts and launched the activist phase of his life. With others, he began building a gay, bisexual and lesbian alumni group and slowly moved to strike against the prejudice students had complained about for years.

Their first initiative, launched in 1984, was to add sexual orientation to the list of categories in Harvard's anti-discrimination rule. He and others met with deans of Harvard's various schools and heard both resistance and support.

But eventually, "the moral arguments start adding up," he says. "Those moral arguments carry a lot of force." The revision passed in 1985, and Goldfarb became--and has since remained--a prominent campus figure.

Since 1985, things have changed, Goldfarb says. Today there are a number of openly gay faculty members, and they are beginning to organize around such issues as domestic partnership benefits, which the University recently granted to faculty and staff.

Goldfarb has been a unifying figure for organization and meetings on that issue, and he has also been prominent in the recent debate over the invitation of Gen. Colin L. Powell to speak at Commencement. This spring, he wrote a letter to President Neil L. Rudenstine and spoke out at student protest meetings.

"I think it [the invitation] indicates the members of the governing board were simply completely ignorant of and insensitive to the presence of the gay, bisexual and lesbian community here," he says.

He will next semester bring the activist and academic sides of his life together in the form of a house seminar on the explanation of causes of homosexuality, both psychological and physiological. He hopes the seminar will continue and extend his efforts to reach out to students, and Goldfarb says he will likely "stay around for dinner often at North House."

He lives in an apartment 10 minutes away from the Yard and walks to work. He takes time off from both activism and scholarship to hike and listen to a 500-strong CD collection, which is heavy on the Romantic composers. He reads Wittgenstein and the occasional contemporary gay fiction. He cooks Indian food.

Cambridge is a comfortable place for a gay couple, he says, and Harvard is without doubt a comfortable place for a scholar. Warren Goldfarb is not likely to move anytime soon

In graduate school, while he continuing his interest in music with voice lessons, he also underwent psychotherapy, seeking a "cure" for his sexual orientation.

"The culture viewed you as being in a diseased state, as unnatural," he says.

Around the time he got his doctorate sexual orientation. It was the difficulty of that process that led him, as a junior professor, to hold out a hand to younger people experiencing the same struggles.

"I had a hard time coming to tennis with my own orientation," he says. "I felt any help we could give to younger people was necessary."

But Goldfarb did not "come out" or begin any public pro-gay activity until after his tenure in 1982.

"I wasn't actively trying to hide it," he says, but "I had some concerns it might impact the tenure process."

Besides as a tenure vote approaches, a junior faculty member has no time for activism. "You don't even have hobbies at that point," Goldfarb says. Also, he recalls, he was convinced he "could do a lot more as a senior professor" than as an non-tenured member of the Faculty.

It was in 1982, then, after the title "Professor of Philosophy" was securely before his name, that Goldfarb started organizational efforts and launched the activist phase of his life. With others, he began building a gay, bisexual and lesbian alumni group and slowly moved to strike against the prejudice students had complained about for years.

Their first initiative, launched in 1984, was to add sexual orientation to the list of categories in Harvard's anti-discrimination rule. He and others met with deans of Harvard's various schools and heard both resistance and support.

But eventually, "the moral arguments start adding up," he says. "Those moral arguments carry a lot of force." The revision passed in 1985, and Goldfarb became--and has since remained--a prominent campus figure.

Since 1985, things have changed, Goldfarb says. Today there are a number of openly gay faculty members, and they are beginning to organize around such issues as domestic partnership benefits, which the University recently granted to faculty and staff.

Goldfarb has been a unifying figure for organization and meetings on that issue, and he has also been prominent in the recent debate over the invitation of Gen. Colin L. Powell to speak at Commencement. This spring, he wrote a letter to President Neil L. Rudenstine and spoke out at student protest meetings.

"I think it [the invitation] indicates the members of the governing board were simply completely ignorant of and insensitive to the presence of the gay, bisexual and lesbian community here," he says.

He will next semester bring the activist and academic sides of his life together in the form of a house seminar on the explanation of causes of homosexuality, both psychological and physiological. He hopes the seminar will continue and extend his efforts to reach out to students, and Goldfarb says he will likely "stay around for dinner often at North House."

He lives in an apartment 10 minutes away from the Yard and walks to work. He takes time off from both activism and scholarship to hike and listen to a 500-strong CD collection, which is heavy on the Romantic composers. He reads Wittgenstein and the occasional contemporary gay fiction. He cooks Indian food.

Cambridge is a comfortable place for a gay couple, he says, and Harvard is without doubt a comfortable place for a scholar. Warren Goldfarb is not likely to move anytime soon