Like all of New York City, the CUNY Graduate Center (GC CUNY) recently celebrated Pride Month, honoring the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. For the occasion, The Thought Project, the GC CUNY’s spirited podcast project led by Tanya Domi, resident Media Relations Director and veteran, activist and a leading advocate for the repeal of policies that banned openly gay people from serving in the armed forces, invited LGBTQ members of the CUNY community to talk about history, careers, progress and struggle.
CUNY staff salutes LGBTQ community in June 2019. photo source: https://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2019/06/14/cuny-salutes-faculty-staff-students-and-alumni-who-have-fought-to-advance-lgbtw-rights/
The staff of the Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library — Polly Thistlethwaite (CUNY Professor and Chief Librarian), Emily Drabinski (Critical Pedagogy Librarian) and Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz (Assistant Professor and Head of Reference) — talked about the history of libraries and librarians who “build the infrastructures that make knowledge possible,” fashion choices and what library careers offer to LGBTQ people.
We also heard from José Luis Jiménez, a New York City public school principal and Ph.D. student in the urban education program at the Graduate Center. Mr. Jiménez is a steering committee member of the Proud Teacher Initiative, a network of teachers, principals, and school professionals supporting one another in coming out. Finally, Perry N. Halkitis, a Graduate Center alum, came to talk about his new book, “Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation.”
Diversity and social justice are deeply inscribed in CUNY, an institution with strong historical ties to the LGBTQ movement. The CUNY Graduate Center proudly hosts the first university-based research center in the United States, the Center for LGBTQ Studies, dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of vital concern to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and communities. The Thought Project interviewed the Center’s Executive Director Justin Brown in an earlier episode. More on CUNY, Pride Month and its salute to the LGBTQ community here.