Dumbledore Is Lonely

By Hauswirth, Kevin

It’s a crazy sign of the times when the fictional headmaster of a school of witchcraft and wizardry can come out but The Chronicle of Higher Education can identify fewer than a dozen openly gay top officers of U.S. institutions of higher learning. In contrast to all the hoopla around the outing of the Harry Potter stories’ Albus Dumbledore, there was much less fanfare when Ralph Hexter, the real- life president of Massachusetts’s Hampshire College, announced his marriage to his long-term male partner in September. In a story the Chronicle published that same month, queer heads of colleges, universities, and independent graduate professional schools stood up to be counted-all 11 of them. Only two were presidents of public universities, both of them part of the University of Maine system.

LGBT professors maybe welcome in lecture halls, but meetings of boards of trustees seem to be a different story. The job of university or college president has less to do with deciding curricula for the next generation and much more to do with nurturing relationships, whether they involve soliciting donations from alumni or, especially if the institution is public, securing government funding. A recent Chronicle study estimated that 84% of trustees at four-year institutions are over age 50. And it comes as little surprise that 86% of college presidents are white and 77% are male, according to a 2006 study conducted by the American Council on Education. Not really a diverse gang.

Charles Middleton of Chicago’s Roosevelt University, one of the nation’s first out university presidents, sees a promising crop of LGBT leadership rising in academia despite a lack of mentors. He believes the true test of progress will be in public universities that don’t have the same independence to push the envelope. It’s one thing to be an out president at a private college-in Hexter’s case, a “progressive alternative school”-but another to head up a school that’s beholden to politicians and their constituencies.

“There’s a Plexiglas ceiling for LGBT leaders in academia,” says Middleton, who thinks the barrier to gay achievement has to be pushed aside before it’s completely broken. When does he see it happening? “Within the next 20 years.”

Copyright LPI Media, Inc Dec 18, 2007

(c) 2007 Advocate, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.