Happy Pride Month! Even today, living and working as a publicly out queer educator is no small feat. Until 2019, federal law in the U.S. did not protect employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity—that means just over half of LGBTQIA2+ people in the U.S. lived in states where they could be fired, refused a promotion, or harassed at their jobs based on their gender identity and sexual orientation.
However, despite fear of stigma, prejudice, or job insecurity, brilliant and compassionate queer educators have continued to elevate American education. Below, we’ve gathered just a few of the queer educators who, through their excellence and resilience, are making institutions of learning more inclusive.
Dr. Bettina Love
Bettina L. Love is a Professor in Education at the University of Georgia, where she has been a pioneer in establishing abolitionist teaching, which focuses on restoring humanity for children in schools. Her writing, research, teaching, and educational advocacy meet at the intersection of education reform, anti-racism, queer studies, and carceral studies. She works with activists, communities, and school districts to build civically-engaged schools that love and affirm queer, Black, and Brown children. She is the author of We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, and her work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including Educational Researcher, Urban Education, and the Journal of LGBT Youth.
Jeff Nunokawa
Hawaii-raised Jeff Nunokowa is a Professor of English at Princeton University, a respected scholar of 19th-century English literature, and the author of The Afterlife of Property: Domestic Security and the Victorian Novel. Most of his research lies at the intersection of 19th-century literature and Gender & Sexuality Studies. Though Nunokawa garners enormous respect for his academic accomplishments, he is perhaps best known for the atmosphere of inclusion and acceptance he cultivated as the head of one of Princeton’s residential colleges and for “Jeffbook”, a daily series of thousands of essays posted to Facebook. He was profiled, rather famously, in FastCompany under the headline, “The Legend of Princeton Professor Jeff Nunokawa”.
Genny Beemyn
As one of the first publicly trans nonbinary college administrators, Genny Beemyn serves as the Director of UMass Amherst’s Stonewall Center and coordinator of Campus Pride’s Trans Policy Clearinghouse. In both of these roles, Beemyn works tirelessly to make the college application process and college campuses more inclusive of queer and trans students. For example, in 1996, they successfully advocated for the University of Iowa to add “gender identity” to its nondiscrimination policy, making it the first college in the U.S. to have any kind of trans-supportive policy. Since then, they’ve worked with truly hundreds of colleges (and even the Common App!) to make their policies more inclusive. In 2016, they developed and began teaching Queer Lights, the first LGBTQIA-themed Engineering course in the country.
Jill Dolan
Jill Dolan is the Dean of the College at Princeton, where she also serves as a Professor in English and Theater. Prior to her appointment as Dean, she directed Princeton’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests include theater, performance studies, women’s and feminist studies, LGBTQ studies, and American studies. As a scholar and teacher, she is the author of many books, including most recently, a critical study of the plays of Wendy Wasserstein. In 2011, she received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism for her blog, The Feminist Spectator.
Blair Imani
After she realized that the history many of us have been taught is seriously flawed, historian and educator Blair Imani dedicated her career to educating folks on the systemic oppression that endangers marginalized individuals today. She has authored the books Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History and Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and The Black American Dream all while educating the public on institutionalized bigotry at a number of universities including Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Duke, and many more. Her scholarship spans gender studies, race and racism, sociology, and United States history, and her work centers women and girls, global Black communities, and the LGBTQ community.
In recent years, certain figures in queer history have finally earned some long-deserved recognition: giants like Bayard Rustin, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have made their way into more curricula. This is absolutely cause for celebration, but the work continues! Many more queer figures throughout history deserve recognition. We are grateful to these queer educators and the many more who are carving out space for more voices in institutions of higher learning. To learn more about Private Prep’s commitment to inclusivity this Pride Month, check out our Values page.
