Academics in Sexual Minorities Can Feel a Need to Stay Closeted

Courtesy C. Sean Robinson

Although society is becoming more tolerant of members of sexual-minority groups, many of those who are academics continue to feel pressure to remain closeted to safeguard their careers. They fear being open at all types of colleges, and not just at institutions affiliated with religions that frown on homosexuality.

That’s one of the chief conclusions reached by C. Sean Robinson, an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at Morgan State University, based on a study involving more than 60 faculty members around the nation who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer. He spent an average of about 90 minutes interviewing each subject, who together represented 33 disciplines at nearly 50 colleges and universities.

He made a point of reaching people in a wide array of sexual-minority groups — not just those who identify as gay or lesbian — and to adjunct instructors, rather than just academics who are tenured or on the tenure track.

Mr. Robinson plans to present his findings next week at the annual conference of the American Association of University Professors, in Washington. The Chronicle interviewed him about his study. Here is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

Q. In contrast to a lot of past research on academics from sexual-minority groups, your study is not limited to those who are tenured or on the tenure track. How does instructors’ employment status factor into their experiences?

A. Many of my participants who were outside of the tenure-track arena — almost half of them — believed that their sexual identity and, in some instances, their gender identity impacted their work in a more political way. They were more likely to be in a box according to heteronormative expectations. They recognize that they can be fired for pretty much any reason.

Q. You describe a substantial share of the subjects of your study as closeted. Were they concealing their sexual identities for professional reasons? If so, why?

A. Those individuals who were closeted were so for professional reasons. Some were in fields where there was a lot of prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and bullying. One happens to be nursing, where almost every single female-identified participant who identified as either bisexual or lesbian was in the closet.

In other fields, many felt a need to be very selective in how they talked about their sexual identity and how they presented it to students and colleagues. Pre-tenure faculty, for political reasons, didn’t want to give anyone any kind of ammunition from a personal perspective. They wanted to make sure that they were given tenure on the merits of their scholarship, teaching, and service.

Q. Did you find major distinctions between faculty members whose academic specialties dealt with sexual identity and those specializing in areas such as mathematics, where issues related to sexuality seemed irrelevant?

A. There was a definite difference when you think large-scale disciplinary groups. Those folks who were in the hard sciences and in STEM fields, where their research and their teaching really did not intersect with their sexual identity or gender identity, were more likely than not to be selectively “out.” They were probably out to some colleagues. They didn’t feel the need to be out to students, because that was irrelevant to the material they were teaching or to their work in a lab or at a field site.

In some of the social-science disciplines, or even some of the humanities disciplines, that was not the case, particularly if their teaching or research intersected with some part of their sexual or gender identity. There was a lot more complexity and a lot more grappling with how to be authentic and how to be out, and to whom.

Q. Did any of your research subjects say their academic careers benefited from their sexual identities?

A. I don’t think anyone actually came out and said, “My career has benefited.” However, a number of participants really excelled by centering their sexual or gender identity in the middle of their teaching, research, and service, which really allowed them to be a star and, in some instances, a superstar. They were authentic in every single thing that they did.

Q. Was tokenism a workplace risk? How?

A. Tokenism was a workplace risk for almost every single participant, in two different ways. Some participants, as out, were seen as the token by students. Students would go to them for advice, for mentoring, for guidance. Many faculty would go to them as the one person that they knew. Some participants talked about being a token by serving on committees, or by being visible to the larger academic community, and framed that in a very positive way.

Others talked about being called for many committees, functions, and activities, to the detriment of their own work. They were always representing everyone of a sexual-minority status, which impacted them negatively from an emotional perspective. They were tired of always being expected to be the voice for all sexual minorities on their campus.

Q. What other challenges did your subjects face?

A. Many talked about the challenges related to getting funded to do research related to sexual-minority identity and gender identity. There is not a whole lot of money from the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health or the National Institute of Mental Health to do some of the work. Finding collaborators is also a major issue. A number of faculty talked about how they were told by senior faculty or mentors that they needed to reframe their research, perhaps not necessarily calling it by its true name. They shouldn’t be doing work on LGBTQ faculty per se, but needed to frame it around diversity or multiculturalism or social justice, something that was the buzzword of the day.

Q. Based on what you have learned, what would be your three main recommendations to college administrators?

A. Human-resource offices need to give serious thought to how to include sexual and gender identity in their policies. There needs to be some explicitness around sexual minority and gender identity and expression. Administrators ought to be mindful of how sexual-minority faculty might be tokenized and what that looks like and feels like. There needs to be more conversation happening across campuses, at all levels, around heteronormative policies and procedures and practices, and how can we become much more inclusive across the board.

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.