Schneider honored by Gay & Lesbian Caucus

Richard G. Schneider Jr. Ph.D. ’81 has been chosen as this year’s recipient of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus (HGLC) Intellectual Innovator Award.

The award will be presented to Schneider at the HGLC annual Commencement Day dinner, this year to be held in Lowell House on June 8. Giving the keynote will be activist and lawyer James Esseks J.D. ’91, whose work focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and the U.S. courts.

“Ideas are the weapons of choice in the battle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights,” says HGLC President Tom Parry ’74. “We are honoring Richard Schneider for his creativity, entrepreneurial acumen, and leadership, especially embodied in his founding of the Gay & Lesbian Review.”

Schneider is editor in chief and founder of the Gay & Lesbian Review, a bimonthly journal now in its 13th year of publication. With a circulation of 12,000, the review fills a vacuum that existed for years in gay and lesbian literary culture. A journal for the literate nonspecialist, the magazine is thought to offer the best writing and thinking LGBT culture has to offer, covering a wide range of topics. It is widely regarded as the leading LGBT cultural and intellectual journal in the United States.

Schneider founded the review with support from the HGLC and The Open Gate: a Fund for Gay & Lesbian Life at Harvard University.

Keynote speaker Esseks is litigation director for the ACLU Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & AIDS Project. The project’s stated mission is to ensure evenhanded treatment of LGBT people by the government; equal rights and protections for LGBT couples and families; and protection from discrimination in jobs, schools, housing, and public accommodations. Esseks oversees litigation, which currently includes cases seeking marriage for same-sex couples in New York, Maryland, and California; challenges to claims of exemption from nondiscrimination laws based on religious belief; various challenges to school districts over the speech, privacy, or association rights of LGBT students; and cases regarding the relationship of the government to people living with HIV/AIDS.

The HGLC will also sponsor reunion events for LGBT alumni/ae (details at http://hglc.org/about/whatsnew.html – reunions), including a seminar on the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender & Sexuality, the College’s new home for LGBT studies. The seminar will feature Timothy McCarthy, lecturer on history and literature and studies of women, gender and sexuality, and student concentrators. It will be held in the Lowell House Junior Common Room from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Commencement Day (June 8).

Formed in 1984,the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus comprises more than 4,000 LGBT Harvard and Radcliffe alumni/ae, faculty, staff, and students.

The HGLC Commencement Day dinner begins with a 5 p.m. social hour, 7 p.m. dinner. The award and after-dinner program will begin at 8 p.m. No reservations are required for the social hour or the program; however, dinner reservations are required and can be made at http://hglc.org/dinner.html. Reservation deadline is June 1. Members and friends of the Harvard LGBT community are welcome.